2 3 2 IN HIGH SUFFOLK 



Are our tables worse furnished, or is our roof-tree 

 colder ? I think not. We kill our own swine, brew 

 our own ale, and press our cider ; bake our dark but 

 palatable bread, and pay our men and our dwindling 

 " tradesmen's bills " from the narrow yield of our own 

 fields. The owner of the " big wood " finds it a little 

 silver-mine. Frugality begins at home a coy but 

 lasting friend and when once won is never lost by the 

 countryman who lives on his own acres. The coal- 

 grates have been pulled out in hall and dining-room, 

 and the old bars rescued from rust in the out-house 

 are piled with the surplus branches of the oaks ; and 

 on Christmas-day the green ashen faggot will blaze 

 and sputter with a lively warmth that mocks the dull 

 caloric of the coal, as young laughter leaps above the 

 book-bound wit of ages. The wood supplies our table 

 with its daintiest fare. Never was there such a year 

 for wild-bred pheasants ; and the stub-rabbits are no 

 longer despised. In December the wood-pigeons come 

 in to roost in large flocks, and pay a daily tribute to 

 the gun. The poor still look for rabbits at Christmas, 

 and on our way to the wood before dusk, to lie in 

 wait for the pigeons, we overhear the rabbiter and the 

 bailiff in consultation : the former deep in the yawning 

 ditch, under the stubbs, the other with his ear to the 

 bolt-hole in the field above. The rabbiter is calm and 

 professional, as becomes one finishing a long day's 

 work. The bailiff a school-boy friend of the poorer 

 man, long since risen in the social scale, a stern and 

 unbending Noncomformist, but with a suppressed but 



