No necessary measurement was ever guessed at, his "rule" was always handy in a special pocket, but in cases where a rough guess was sufficient he would hazard it by what he called "scowl of brow" (intently regarding it). The agricultural labourer is inclined, both with weights and measures, to be inaccurate, "reckoning it's near enough." I found soon after I came to Aldington that the weighing machine which had been in use throughout the whole of my predecessor's time, and had weighed up hundreds of pounds of wool at 2s. and 2s. 6d. a pound, cheese at 8d., and thousands of sacks of wheat, barley, and beans, was about a pound in each hundredweight _against the seller_, so that he must have lost a considerable sum in giving overweight. Tom G. was scornful about weather signs, and summed up his doubts in such matters with sarcasm: "I reckon that the indications for rain are very similar to the indications for fine weather!" But the best epigram I ever heard from him was, "There's a right way and a wrong way to do everything, and folks most in general chooses the wrong un!" I should like to see those words of wisdom on the title-page of every school book, and blazoned up in letters of gold on the wall of every classroom in every school in the kingdom. I have referred to the hop-kilns I built. Throughout the work of erecting them, and it was no small one, Tom G. was the leading spirit; it gave scope for his abilities, I think, on a larger scale than any building he had previously undertaken. We began with a kiln sufficient for the first 6 acres planted; it was necessary, with the gradual extinction of British corn-growing, to find something to supersede it, and to compensate for the falling off in farm receipts. I had seen something of hops as a pupil on a large farm near Alton, Hampshire, where they occupied an area of over a hundred acres, but at that time I had no intention of growing them myself, and had not been infected with the glamour, formerly attaching to hops beyond any other crop, that came to me later. I visited the old Alton farm, and obtained all particulars of the latest kind of hop-kiln in the neighbourhood from the inventor, and instructed him to prepare plans and specifications for the conversion of an old malthouse close to the Manor. I contracted with Tom G. for all the carpenter's work, and with an excellent stonemason or bricklayer for that belonging to his department. They both entered with enthusiasm upon the job, and we had many interesting discussions as to improvement, as it proceeded. Tom G. was a man of great resource, and could always find a way out of every difficulty; he told me, before we began, that he could see the completed building as if actually finished, just as a great sculptor once said how easy it was to produce a statue from a block of marble, for all he had to do was to cut away the superfluous material!