A PILGRIMAGE. 351 



gration. After that period I could find nothing of them in 

 England. 



I have given this account, because the incident is so character- 

 istic of an American's visit to England, as well as because it shows 

 what an historic interest may attach to any old farm-house in 

 England. I once afterwards entered a cottage in Lincolnshire 

 where a child was playing with what appeared to be an old iron 

 pot, but which proved, upon examination, to be a helmet. The 

 father, a clod-hopping yeoman, said it had been worn in France 

 by some one of his forefathers. He had a horse-rug that came 

 down to him with it. This he brought upon my asking to see it 

 a quilted horse cover, once elaborately embroidered. Since these 

 things came back from some war in France, hundreds of years 

 ago, they had always remained in this house, which, with. some 

 forty acres of land around it, he had inherited. He did not live 

 very well, but his land was yet unincumbered, and he hoped his 

 son might be a "yeoman-farmer" after him. 



But it is a melancholy thing that there are so few yeoman 

 now in England ; that is, farmers owning the land they till, and 

 independent of landlords. 



