198 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
could not... He was comparatively well-to-do, yet he 
was not above an extra shilling. 
This is one of the most curious traits in the character 
of cottage folk—they do not care for small sums; they 
do not care to pick up sixpences. They seem to be 
araid of obliging people—as if tg do so, even to their 
own advantage, would be against their personal honour 
and dignity. In London the least trifle is snapped up 
immediately, and there is a great crush and press for 
permission to earn a penny, and that not in very digni- 
fied ways. In the country it is quite different. Large 
fortunes have been made out of matches ; now your true 
country cottager would despise such a miserable fraction 
of a penny as is represented by amatch, I heard a 
little girl singing— 
Little drops of water, little grains of sand, 
It is these that make oceans and mountains; it is 
pennies that make millionaires. But this the country- 
man cannot see. Not him alone either; the dislike to 
little profits is a national characteristic, well marked in 
the farmer, and indeed in all classes, I, too, must be 
humble, and acknowledge that I have frequently detected 
the same folly in myself, so let it not be supposed for 
an instant that I set up as a censor; I do but delineate. 
Work for the cottager must be work to please him ; and 
to please him it must be the regular sort to which he is 
accustomed, which he did beside his father as a boy, 
which Azs father did, and /A7s father before him; the 
same old plough or grub-axe, the same milking, the 
same identical mowing, if possible in the same field. 
He does not care for any new-fangled jobs : he does not 
recognise them, they have no /ocaus standi—they are not 
‘established. Yet he is most anxious for work, and 
