spiritless-looking
bit of road, with raw stones on one side of it. It is also, I perceive,
the high destiny of man in conflict with mankind. It is the way to
Harwich, Holland, Russia, China, and the whole wide world.

Even at the first glance it impresses one as not being the road that
would satisfy an energetic and capable people. It is narrow for a high
road, and in the middle of it one is checked by an awkward bend, by
cross-roads that are not exactly cross-roads, so that one has to turn
two blind corners to get on eastward, and a policeman, I don't know at
what annual cost, has to be posted to nurse the traffic across. Beyond
that point one is struck by the fact that the south side is considerably
higher than the north, that storm water must run from the south side to
the north and lie there. It does, and the north side has recently met
the trouble by putting down raw flints, and so converting what would be
a lake into a sort of flint pudding. Consequently one drives one's car
as much as possible on the south side of this road. There is a
suggestion of hostility and repartee between north and south side in
this arrangement, which the explorer's inquiries will confirm. It may be
only an accidental parallelism with profounder fact; I do not know. But
the middle of this high road is a frontier. The south side belongs to
the urban district of Braintree; the north to the rural district of
Bocking.

If the curious inquirer will take pick and shovel he will find at any
rate one corresponding dualism below the surface. He will find a
Bocking water main supplying the houses on the north side and a
Braintree water main supplying the south. I rather suspect that the
drains are also in duplicate. The total population of Bocking and
Braintree is probably little more than thirteen thousand souls
altogether, but for that there are two water supplies, two sets of
schools, two administrations.

To the passing observer the rurality of the Bocking side is
indistinguishable from the urbanity of the Braintree side; it is just a
little muddier. But there are dietetic differences. If you will present
a Bocking rustic with a tin of the canned fruit that is popular with the
Braintree townsfolk, you discover one of these differences. A dustman
perambulates the road on the Braintree side, and canned food becomes
possible and convenient therefore. But the Braintree grocers sell canned
food with difficulty into Bocking. Bocking, less fortuna