Even within recent years, now and then a servant-girl upon entering service at the farmhouse would refuse to touch butcher's meat. She had never tasted anything but bacon at home, and could only be persuaded to eat fresh meat with difficulty, being afraid she should not like it. One girl who came from a lonely cottage in a distant 'coombe-bottom' of the Downs was observed never to write home or attempt to communicate with her parents. She said it was of no use; no postman came near, and the letters they wrote or the letters written to them never reached their destination. 'Coombe-bottom' is a curious duplication--either word being used to indicate a narrow valley or hollow. An unfortunate child who lived there had never been so well since the stone roller went over his head. She had a lover, but he was 'a gurt hummocksing noon-naw,' so she was not sorry to leave him. The phrase might be translated, 'great loose-jointed idiot.' They sometimes had lettuce-pudding for dinner, and thought nothing of eating raw bacon. In the snow the men wound hay-bands round their legs to serve as gaiters, and found it answered admirably. One poor girl had been subject to fits ever since a stupid fellow, during the haymaking, jokingly picked up a snake and threw it round her neck. Yet even in that far-away coombe-bottom they knew enough to put an oyster-shell in the kettle to prevent incrustation. The rules of pronunciation understood about Okebourne seemed to consist in lengthening the syllables that are usually spoken quick, and shortening those that are usually long. Hilary said that years ago it really appeared as if there was something deficient in the organs of the throat among the labourers, for there were words they positively could not pronounce. The word 'reservoir,' for instance, was always 'tezzievoy;' they could not speak the word correctly. He could not explain to me a very common expression among the men when they wished to describe anything unusual or strange for which they had no exact equivalent. It was always 'a sort of a meejick.' By degrees, however, we traced it back to 'menagerie.' The travelling shows of wild beasts at first so much astonished the villagers that everything odd and curious became a menagerie, afterwards corrupted to 'meejick.' 'Caddle no man's cattle' was a favourite proverb with a population who were never in a hurry. 'Like shot out of a show'l,' to express extreme nimbleness, was another. A comfortless, bare apartment was 'gabern;' anything stirred with a pointed instrument was 'ucked'--whether a cow 'ucked' the fogger with her horn or the stable was cleaned out with the fork. The verb 'to uck' was capable indeed of infinite conjugation, and young Aaron, breaking off a bennet, once asked me to kindly 'uck' a grain of hay-dust out of his eye with it. When a heron rose out of the brook 'a moll ern flod away.'