68 IN THE WEALD 
been thought about. Indeed, as matters are at present, 
you have to walk four or five miles before you reach 
a railway station when you are in the centre of the 
Weald. Eighteen years had passed since my last 
visit, yet, with the exception of a few new mansions 
not many and one new shop with plate-glass win- 
dows, in what can only be called a village by courtesy, 
things remain as they have been for centuries, so far 
at least as outward appearances go. If our readers 
will recall to mind the sudden formation of railways 
through districts that had never had anything except 
the plough to move the earth all this within the 
last twenty and thirty years they will be able to 
form some opinion of the wonderment of some of the 
old folks in this out-of-the-way region when they first 
heard of the railroads being made in their midst. 
But their existence has made little change here. The 
people still have many primitive customs. Take, for 
instance, one of these before the change came. The 
farming portion of the population nearly all were of 
that class paid in kind ; very little money passed. 
If the village shoemaker made shoes for a small farmer 
and his family, he generally took it out in farm pro- 
duce. This system still prevails more or less. I have 
read much that has been written by those who have 
pretended to understand the agricultural population 
