Oddities 
him passing the front-door and give him orders 
for the morrow’s work. 
It may have been from this sort of man that 
the Aldershot neighbourhood derived that evil 
character which certainly clung to it for many 
years. ‘There was a man I often saw—a man of 
bovine countenance, surly yet suspicious—whom 
John Smith indicated as a tricky employer— 
exactly the sort of employer whom Trade Unions, 
nowadays, begin to keep in order a little in other 
industries. This man, a “dealer” rather than 
a genuine farmer, was under agreement to pay 
his cowman a shilling for every calf born on the 
farm. But, as calving time drew near, he was 
wont to turn the cow out to graze on a near heath, 
and the cowman had no claim for calves that came 
home to the farm from there. But he seldom 
saw the shilling, Mr. Smith asserted, even for 
those calves he did assist into the world. 
It may have been because he liked to tease 
me politically that Mr. Smith once told, too 
fully, of a certain acquaintance—possibly living 
even now—who had ratted round to Liberalism 
on plainly contemptible grounds. Would I 
know why a certain small but cosy-looking 
cottage had never been occupied since its com- 
pletion years ago? It was because the owner 
had had a dispute with the overseers as to its 
assessment for rates; and since neither would 
65 E 
