JANUARY 53 



plausible explanations as to how he came to be found selling straw 

 off the farm. This sort is at one end of the scale. At the other 

 stands the silver-haired old gentleman who has been a tenant on 

 the estate for fifty years, and all that time has never failed to meet 

 his rent. To such a one to 'get behind ' is a real grief; indeed 

 I have seen a man of this stamp almost break into tears because 

 the times had at last proved too much for him. The most 

 remarkable tenant that ever I had to do with, however, was an old 

 gentleman, now dead, who had occupied a farm belonging to this 

 estate for no less than seventy-seven years. The time seems 

 long, but he was born in a certain room in that homestead, 

 for seventy-seven years he slept every night of his life in the 

 room, and there finally he died. He was a man who drove about 

 the country a good deal to markets and other places, but, at 

 any rate during the latter part of his life, no earthly consideration 

 would have induced him to be away from home for a single 

 night. Indeed, the dread of such a thing obtained a complete 

 mastery of his mind, and I believe that on one or two occasions, 

 when accident detained him at a distance, he spared no expense, 

 and journeyed incessantly to reach his farm before the following 

 dawn. In these days of frequent and distant travel it is cer- 

 tainly curious to hear of a man of some position who has slept 

 in a single house for seventy-seven years, but among the lower 

 classes such cases are not exceptional. Thus, a few years ago, 

 one day when I chanced to be at a village called Spexhall, 

 about six miles from Bungay, where I have a farm, I lost my way 

 in a lane and asked a labouring man to show it to me. He proved 

 almost as uncertain about it as I was myself, which puzzled me 

 till I discovered that, although he must have been sixty years old 

 and had lived in Spexhall all his life, he had never yet visited 

 Bungay, a few miles from his door. 



When the tenants have been interviewed, or most of them, 

 dinner is announced, about three o'clock generally, and everybody 

 adjourns to a long, old-fashioned room. Here the landlord takes 

 the head of the table, and the agent the foot, while the tenants 



