A KENTISH PARISH 63 



So that its population is getting to be somewhat mixed, 

 and yet in its outlying nooks and corners there are 

 worthies who go jogging from the cradle to the grave, 

 just as their fathers and their grandfathers did before 

 them. Oakenhurst is scarcely more than a score of 

 miles, as the crow flies, from London Stone or St. 

 Paul's Churchyard ; occasionally we come within the 

 radius of the city smoke, though far more often we 

 are fanned by those Channel breezes ; and forty years 

 ago, to all intents and purposes, it must have been 

 well-nigh as much out of the world as if it had lain in 

 the Cumberland dales or down in the fen country. A 

 venerable gentleman of fine though decayed physique, 

 who is now laid up in lavender in the almshouses, will 

 babble to you by the hour, if you will only listen, of 

 the days when he used to work the Pig -and Whistle. 

 Of course there were no railways in those good old 

 times even now they come no nearer than four miles 

 on the one side and half a dozen on the other and his 

 Pig and Whistle maintained communications with the 

 coaches at the great posting-station of Lowbeech. But 

 at Lowbeech your Highflyers, Comets, and Eclipses 

 never condescended to pick up casual passengers, being 

 invariably filled outside and in. And accommodation, 

 even in the heavy coaches, was always precarious, so 

 that it was altogether a toss-up how or when the towns- 

 folk of Oakenhurst were forwarded to the metropolis. 

 Thus, as the journey was an affair of doubt and time, 

 most of them wisely stuck to their homes, transacting 

 their business by post or carrier. As for the gentry, 



