354 THE OLD MANOR HOUSE 



covers well over a period of a hundred years. These 

 are the true aristocracy of the soil, and they have a 

 praiseworthy dislike, even in these days of unrest and 

 of a general strong setting townward, to quitting it. 

 A village girl is, with difficulty, induced to take a 

 servant's place beyond the radius of a few miles from 

 Melcombe, and if she does, the " heimweh" is too 

 much for her ; she soon comes home again. A young 

 man who had been induced, in an unguarded moment, 

 to take a "place" the other side of London, got 

 out of the railway carriage at Templecombe, only 

 twenty miles away, thinking it was the metropolis, 

 and could, with difficulty, be persuaded to go 

 further afield. He, too, soon found his way back, 

 and will, probably, never be induced to leave his 

 home again. The mothers are inveterate stay-at- 

 homes. 



" Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, 

 Their sober wishes never learn to stray." 



A woman of quite exceptional character and 

 intelligence, who died, the other day, at an advanced 

 age, and had lived most of her life at Bingham's 

 Melcombe, boasted that she had been only twice 

 in her life to Melcombe Horsey, a hamlet which lies 

 a mile on one side of her home, and only once in 



