142 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES, 



street to the common and the tavern and the pump. 

 If we travel thitherward, we are thrust into the back- 

 sides of towns upon some raw cut of a railway, amid 

 all manner of debris and noisome smells. Now I 

 suppose that old-time villagers took a pride in their 

 common, with its stately trees in their court-house, 

 their breadth and neatness of high-road, as being the 

 objects which must of necessity fasten the regard of 

 those from the outside world who paid their town a 

 visit. The two deacons who lived opposite, would 

 never decorate their door-yards, or walks, for the 

 entertainment of each other, but rather for the ad- 

 miration of the public, which must needs pass their 

 doors. But yet and it is a curious fact in the his- 

 tory of public taste in these times, when old villages 

 are disembowelled by the railway, and all their showi- 

 ness turned inside out, there seems very little regard 

 paid to the observation of that larger public which is 

 hurtling by every day in the cars. 



The former traveller along the high-road, was cau- 

 tiously placated with orderly palings, neat door-yards, 

 an array of grass and flowering shrubs, with a church 

 in imposing position ; but the larger public that now 

 visits the locality is greeted with a terrific array of 

 backsides, of lumbering styes, disorderly fences, and 

 no token that the village world is cognizant of their 

 presence, or careful of their judgment. Of course, the 



