a bit of bread with us as a reward to the dog and to take off his attention from the truffles.” Need I say that it was from my hand that little Nell received her reward that day, which she took as became her, gently and affectionately, after the day’s hunt was over.
I shall not carry my readers with me to the end of our hunt, nor relate how disappointed we were in the size and number of those found by Nell on that bright hot day. A truffle hunt, though very interesting and amusing to witness, would appear monotonous in a description, and therefore it is sufficient for the encouragement of those who would like to see one, that, if they go out later in the autumn, they will doubtless have as good a day’s sport as I had on my second attempt, and will bring home in triumph truffles large enough and black enough to delight a French cook’s heart, although they will probably fail in discovering another “monster truffle.”
One piece of information I will give before I close my account of truffles, and that is, how the dogs are trained for truffle-hunting. I will give it in the words of an old woman, the wife of another of the trufflers, who answered my question in the following way:—
“How we trains ’em, sir? Why, bless you, we takes ’em as puppies, and ties ’n up, and then we takes a truffle and chucks ’em—”
“Well,” I said, as she stopped short, “and then I suppose the puppy eats it?”
“Oh no, bless you, we never let’s ’n eat ’em; that would spoil ’em.”
“Then what do you do? Do you make them fetch and carry?”
“No, surely, we just chucks ’em.”
“But what do the puppies do?” said I, getting out of patience, and screaming at the top of my voice, in the vain idea that the woman was too deaf to have heard me. “That can’t teach them.”
“Oh bless you, it does; he snaps at ’em, and we chucks ’em—and—and—” (here I interrupted, hoping to get at the root of the matter), “you let the puppy out with the other dogs, don’t you?”
“Oh dear no, we just ties ’em up, and chucks the truffle to he, and—”
“Well!” I said, provoked to a degree.
“Why, then,” says the old woman, “we takes another and chucks ’em, and then we takes again and chucks; and so you see we just” (hesitating a little for fresh words, but in vain), and in her loudest voice, “we just chucks ’em.”
In despair I turned round and ran out of the cottage, and the last words that rang on my ears were “we just chucks ’em.”
May my readers glean from the old woman’s words more information than I did!
A MODERN IDYLL.
No more upon our meads fond shepherds languish,
Piping unto their loves beside a brook,
Or telling of inconstancy and anguish
Unto some friendly brother of the crook.
The oaten reed is silenced now, the tabor
Is never heard within our shady groves,
And Colins find no solace from their labour
In weaving summer garlands for their loves.
But poetry abides with us for ever
And only takes new fashion from the time;
No change of ours hath strength enough to sever
Our outward labour from its inner chime.
Our Phillisses are dead, we have strewed flowers
Upon their graves, and they exist no more;
Their simple loves are past, their shady bowers
Are merely matters of a poet’s lore.
But we have maidens still with fair young faces
As loveable as were the shepherd maids,
And in these modern times we find the traces
Of those sweet beauties of the forest glades.
In summer by the fragrant roadside hedges
Where primrose and sweet honeysuckle grow,
Or by the silent streams, where, midst the sedges,
The white-leaved water-lilies sway and flow;
Or waist-high midst the purple foxgloves straying,
Through woodland pathways in the checkered shades,
As in the olden time they went a-Maying,
Now wander forth our fair-faced English maids.
And we have swains as loving and true hearted
As those Arcadian shepherds who are dead:
The earnestness of love had not departed
When those old days of sylvan wooing fled.
They were the outward clothing of the passion,
Which still hath life in spite of their decay,
And we have now, although in other fashion,
The old, old idyll in the present day.
The sloping down with patches of sweet clover,
The sullen surge upon the shore beneath,
The background formed of uplands, dotted over
With tangled masses of the flow’ry heath,
And hedgerows, decked in all their summer favours,
Binding the meadows where the white flocks stray,
Such is the scene, which of the old time savours,
Wherein we place the idyll of our day.
Upon the sloping downs the sun is shining
And lights upon a circle of fair girls,
Who, in a pleasant indolence reclining,
The while the sea-breeze plays upon their curls,
Are list’ning with a kind of lazy pleasure
Unto the swain who, stretched amidst the ring,
Is reading in a voice of idle leisure,
The laureate’s tuneful “Idylls of the King.”
One plucks a little tuft of daisies growing,
And pulls them as she listens to the tale,
Shredding them with her fingers and then throwing
The pink-tipped leaves to flutter in the gale.
Another, on her elbow leaning forward,
Is idly gazing at a little skiff,
And watching it as it comes sailing shoreward
Until it vanishes beneath the cliff.
Some dreamingly, some earnestly, all listen
Unto the story of the fair Elaine
And of her hopeless love, and bright eyes glisten
At such a tale of sweetness, yet of pain.
And still the voice rolls onward with its story
Of erring Lancelot and Guinevere,
And of the tourney with its knightly glory,
And of the deep wound with the broken spear.
