remember yet how subtly the intimations of a primitive mode of living
used to reach me before I had learnt to appreciate their meaning.
Unawares an impression of antiquity would come stealing over the senses,
on a November evening, say, when the blue wood-smoke mounted from a
cottage chimney and went drifting slowly down the valley in level
layers; or on still summer afternoons, when there came up from the
hollow the sounds of hay-making--the scythe shearing through the grass,
the clatter of the whetstone, the occasional country voices. The
dialect, and the odd ideas expressed in it, worked their elusive magic
over and over again. To hear a man commend the weather, rolling out his
"Nice moarnin'" with the fat Surrey "R," or to be wished "Good-day,
sir," in the high twanging voice of some cottage-woman or other, was to
be reminded in one's senses, without thinking about it at all, that one
was amongst people not of the town, and hardly of one's own era. The
queer things, too, which one happened to hear of, the simple ideas which
seemed so much at home in the valley, though they would have been so
much to be deprecated in the town, all contributed to produce the same
old-world impression. Where the moon's changes were discussed so
solemnly, and people numbered the "mistis in March" in expectation of
corresponding "frostis in May"; where, if a pig fell sick, public
opinion counselled killing it betimes, lest it should die and be
considered unfit for food; where the most time-honoured saying was
counted the best wit, so that you raised a friendly smile by murmuring
"Good for young ducks" when it rained; where the names of famous sorts
of potatoes--red-nosed kidneys, _magnum bonums_, and so on--were better
known than the names of politicians or of newspapers; where spades and
reap-hooks of well-proved quality were treasured as friends by their
owners and coveted by other connoisseurs--it was impossible that one
should not be frequently visited by the feeling of something very
old-fashioned in the human life surrounding one.

More pointed in their suggestion of a rustic tradition were the various
customs and pursuits proper to given seasons. The customs, it is true,
were preserved only by the children; but they had their acceptable
effect. It might have been foolish and out-of-date, yet it was
undeniably pleasant to know on May Day that the youngsters were making
holiday from school, and to have them come to the door with the