OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



ENGLISH folk don't 'cotton' to 

 their poverty at all ; they don't 

 eat humble-pie with a relish ; 

 they resent being - poor and despised. 

 Foreign folk seem to take to it quite 

 naturally ; an Englishman, somehow or 

 other, always feels that he is wronged. 

 He is injured ; he has not got his rights. 

 To me it seems the most curious thing 

 possible that well-to-do people should 

 expect the poor to be delighted with 

 their condition. I hope they never will 

 be; an evil day that— if it ever came — 

 for the Anglo-Saxon race.— 'Field and 

 Hedgerow': Cottage Ideas. 



THE well-to-do are educated, 

 they have travelled, if not in 

 their ideas, they are more or 

 less cosmopolitan. In the cottager you 

 get to ' bed-rock ' as the Americans say ; 

 there 's the foundation. Character runs 

 upwards not downwards. It is not the 



103 



