HOP-GARDENS AND FARMING 79 



rarer than it used to be. Then there is the tenant- 

 farmer of comfortable means, who sinks his spare 

 capital in the hazardous hops, in preference to ex- 

 tending his holding or going in for a higher style of 

 farming ; who sends his daughters to boarding-schools 

 and buys them second-hand pianos, and decks them 

 out of a Sunday, with their mother, like the blooming 

 lilies of the field. And there is the struggling holder 

 who starves his land if he is not driven to retrench on 

 personal necessaries. But whatever his means, or the 

 balance at his bankers, or the state of his current 

 account with his landlord, his features seldom show 

 any signs of his anxieties, pecuniary or otherwise. The 

 Kentish farmers lay flesh on their solid bones like their 

 own oilcake-fed oxen, meet their neighbours half-way 

 in hearty good fellowship, and are kindly and liberal 

 masters to their dependents. 



A certain " decentralisation " is a conspicuous feature 

 in the farms. Although their acreage may be of no 

 great extent, you come everywhere upon outlying 

 cattle-sheds and barns. Follow some deep-worn 

 waggon-track through the fields, and it leads you 

 perhaps to a lonely hollow, with a shallow pool half 

 overgrown with sedges, and thickly coated over with 

 duckweed. The water-hens are swimming out and in 

 of the cover, and in spring the alder copse is vocal 

 with the notes of the thrushes and blackbirds, who 

 have come to make their nests where they can bathe 

 and drink at their pleasure. And throwing its shadow 

 over the sombre pool is the great rough building of 



