Rustic Manners and Customs. 93 



sources for his particular commodity, and when the farmer 

 wanted a fresh connection for the disposal of his produce, the 

 necessity for Bartholomew Fair and other similar meeting 

 grounds is apparent. 



The weekly local markets of this period often began as late 

 as 3 p.m. The farmers brought their sale grain into the town 

 in bulk, and stored it at the various inns — a process technically 

 termed " pitching." Millers and maltsters met them in the 

 open market place and bargained over the sample bags. There 

 could not have been on the faces of these vendors the same 

 anxiety as is depicted on those of our modern husbandmen 

 when transacting this business, for all that grain lying at the 

 various alehouses was protected by Grovernment from low 

 prices. Later, when the market hour was changed to 11 a.m., 

 the " ordinary " became a standing institution, and the bells 

 of half a dozen inns would suddenly ring out a summons for 

 all to desert business and renew the inner man.^ 



In these uneducated, pre-railroad times, facilities of commu- 

 nication were a prominent difficulty. Postal contact with the 

 national centres was provided for by a tri- weekly service, which 

 required the attention of 182 deputy postmasters, who were 

 distributed over the country so that no considerable market 

 town was without its office ; horses, kept at every post stage, 

 were, for threepence per mile, at the service of any traveller 

 whose business required expedition ; and the royal revenue, 

 after clearing all the expenses of management, was from the 

 National Postal Service alone, £50,000.^ Already the shadow 

 of good things to come was apparent in the metropolitan area. 

 A daily penny post, hitherto a mere dream, was, by the estab- 

 lishment of a daily delivery between London and the Downs, 

 and a penny rate throughout the radius of London proper, 

 assuming a concrete form.^ Kalm was delighted with it, and 

 describes how not only could one send a letter not exceeding 

 a pound's weight for this trifling sum, but that for another 

 penny he could, however distant he happened to be from the 



* Fragments of Two Centuries, i>. 108. A. Kingston, 1893. 

 ^ The New State of England, Part II. ch. iv. p. 48. 

 » Id. Ibid. 



