1 68 THE UPPER THAMES VALLEY 



visiting we suddenly fell across a few neglected fields 

 overrun with weeds and with the fences in the last 

 stages of decay and disrepair. This was the local 

 small holder, a cheerful soul whose acquaintance we 

 afterwards made. By dint of working from dawn till 

 dark he managed to keep his end up ; but we gathered 

 that the general body of labourers and labour in the 

 district was described as both sufficient and good 

 showed no particular desire to follow his example. 

 Our host naturally held strong views on the policy of 

 expropriating farmers like himself to replace them 

 by men who would either put acres together in their 

 turn or sink into slipshod skinners of a bare sustenance 

 from an impoverished soil ; but he considered that the 

 small-holding movement had lost its force. What he 

 did fear was the continuance of the sales of estates and 

 the disturbance of the current farmers by new men 

 with exaggerated ideas of the profits attached to farm- 

 ing ; but even the present rush to sell land was no 

 new phenomenon, for much the same thing happened 

 forty years ago, during the last period of rising rents 

 and land hunger in England. Men do not become 

 bakers or millers just because times are good, but there 

 are always men ready to rush into farming as soon as 

 the returns promise any sort of a living. 



In the late afternoon we took leave, but our route 

 still lay through the pleasant country where the 

 Cotswold streams are finding their way down to the 

 Thames, a country of warm stone-built houses, roofed, 

 too, with stone, the " Stonesfield Slates," which take 

 such an exquisite patina with time. It is essentially 

 a soft country with a charm of its own that has been 

 caught by one of its deepest lovers William Morris. 

 We passed close by his old house, Kelmscott, now 

 known for its milking Shorthorns, but other places 



