and board as we fared along we fell short of the Arcadian theory of
walking-tours in which the wayfarer, like a mendicant friar, takes toll
of lunch and dinner from the hospitable farmer of sentimental legend, and
sleeps for choice in barns, hayricks or hedgesides. Now, sleeping out of
doors in October, if you have ever tried it, is a very different thing
from sleeping out of doors in June, and as for rural hospitality--well,
if you are of a sensitive constitution you shrink from obtruding
yourself, an alien apparition, upon the embarrassed and embarrassing
rural domesticities. Besides, to be quite honest, rural table-talk,
except in Mr. Hardy's novels or pastoral poetry, is, to say the least,
lacking in variety. Indeed, if the truth must be told, the conversation
of country people, generally speaking, and an occasional, very
occasional, character or oddity apart, is undeniably dull, and I hope it
will not be imputed to me for hardness of heart that, after some
long-winded colloquy or endless reminiscence, sententious and trivial, I
have thought that Gray's famous line should really have been
written--"the long and tedious annals of the poor."

But my heart smites me with ingratitude toward some kindly memories as I
write that--memories of homely welcome, simple and touching and
dignified. Surely I am not writing so of the genial farmer on whom we
came one lunch hour as he was stripping corn in his yard.

"Missus," he called to the house a few yards away, "can you find any
lunch for two good-looking fellows here?"

The housewife came to the door, scanned us for a second, and replied in
the affirmative. As we sat down to table, our host bowed his head and
said a simple grace for the bacon and cabbage, pumpkin-pie, cheese and
tea we were about to receive; and the unexpected old-fashioned rite, too