I have read one or two books on the nature of soils, and it is not without significance to me that the little, the very little, useful knowledge I have of these things was derived not from the books but from Mr Jeremy. There was a bit of ground in my garden where I could make nothing grow, and I hunted in vain through all the gardening books I could find for a remedy, and even went the length of consulting some of the gifted authors, two of whom were ladies. I sent them specimens of the soil for examination; they teased them with formulæ and tormented them with acids; they boiled them in retorts and pickled them in glass tubes; they sent me the names of marauding bacteria whose lodgings they had discovered in that morsel of earth: and I, following their instructions, dosed the land with atrocious chemicals, until the earth-worms sickened and the very snails forsook the tainted spot. Still nothing would grow. Then came Mr Jeremy. He picked up a handful of the soil; gazed at it as a lapidary gazes at diamonds; smelt it; felt it tenderly with his forefinger; spat upon it; rubbed the mixture on his breeches; inspected the result, first on his breeches and then on his hand--and now my barren patch is blossoming like the garden of the Lord. The others had advised me to try I know not what--nitrates of this and phosphates of that, sulphates of the other and carbonates of something else. Mr Jeremy said, "Chuck a cart-load o' fine sand on her and then rip her up." Mr Jeremy, I have said, was aware that his roots struck deeply into the past, and this consciousness, I believe, helped to give him that confidence in himself without which no man can successfully till the earth or battle with destiny--the two things, I believe, being at bottom much the same.