48 A Walk from 



CHAPTER IV. 



TALK WITH AN OLD MAN ON THE WAY OLD HOUSES IN ENGLAND 



THEIR AMERICAN RELATIONSHIPS ENGLISH HEDGES AND HEDGE- 

 ROW TREES THEIR PROBABLE FATE CHANGE OF BURAL SCENERY 



WITHOUT THEM, 



FROM Tiptree I had a pleasant walk to Coggeshall, 

 a unique and antique town, marked by the quaint 

 and picturesque architecture of the Elizabethean regime. 

 On the way I met an old man, eighty-three years of 

 age, busily at work with his wheelbarrow, shovel, and 

 bush-broom, gathering up the droppings of manure on 

 the road. I stopped and had a long talk with him, 

 and learned much of those ingenious and minute in- 

 dustries by which thousands of poor men house, feed, 

 and clothe themselves and their families in a country 

 superabounding with labor. He had nearly filled his 

 barrow, after trundling it for four miles. He could 

 sell his little load for 4d. to a neighboring farmer ; but 

 he intended to keep it for a small garden patch allotted 

 to him by his son, with whom he lived. These few 

 square yards of land constituted the microscopic point 

 of his attachment to that great globe still holding in 

 reserve unmeasured territories of productive soil, on 



