218 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



lambing season, when the east wind blows and he 

 needs shelter, is sure to have a scrap of newspaper 

 with him to pore over in the hollow of the windy 

 downs. In summer he reads in the shade of the firs 

 while his sheep graze on the slope beneath. The 

 little country stations are often not stations at all 

 in the urban idea of such a convenience, being quite 

 distant from any town, and merely gathering together 

 the traffic from cross-roads. But the porters and men 

 who work there at times get a good many newspapers, 

 and these, after looking at them themselves, they take 

 or send up to their relatives in the village ^ye or six 

 miles away. Everybody likes to tell another the 

 news; and now that there is such a village demand 

 for papers, to pass on a paper is like passing the news, 

 and gives a pleasure to donor and recipient. 



So that papers which in days gone by would have 

 stopped where they first arrived now travel on and 

 circulate. If you had given a cottager a newspaper a 

 few years since he would have been silent and looked 

 glum. If you give him one now he says, " Thank you," 

 briskly. He and his read anything and everything; 

 and as he walks beside the waggon he will pick up a 

 scrap of newspaper from the roadside and pore over it 

 as he goes. Girls in service send home papers from 

 London ; so do the lads when from home — and so many 

 are away from home now. Papers come from Australia 

 and America; the latter are especial favourites on 

 account of the oddities with which the editors fill 

 the corners. No one ever talks of the Continent in 

 agricultural places ; you hear nothing of France or 

 Germany ; nothing of Paris or Vienna, which are not 



