Even in these bad times the man with a head on his shoulders above the average of his neighbours comes forth to show what can be done with energy and pluck.  Twenty years ago a labouring man, who “by crook or by hook” had saved a hundred pounds, bought a thrashing machine (probably second-hand) He took it round to the various farms, and did the thrashing at so much per day.  By and by he had saved enough money to take a farm.  A few years later he had two thrashing machines travelling the country, and in this poor district is now esteemed a wealthy man.  I always found him an excellent game-preserver and a most straightforward fellow.  Another farming neighbour of mine, however, was always talking about his ignorance and lack of caste.  All classes, from the peer to the peasant, seem to resent a man’s pushing his way from what they are pleased to consider a lower station into their own.

In the autumn gipsies are to be seen travelling the roads, or sitting round the camp fire, on their way to the various “feasts” or harvest festivals.  “Have you got the old gipsy blood in your veins?” I asked the other day of a gang I met on their way to Quenington feast “Always gipsies, ever since we can remember,” was the reply.  Fathers, grandfathers were just the same,—­always living in the open air, winter and summer, and always moving about with the vans.  In the winter hawking is their occupation.  “Oh no! they never felt the cold in winter; they could light the fire in the van if they wanted it.”

Although many of the farmers here have given up treating their men to a spread after the harvest is gathered in, there is still a certain amount of rejoicing.  The villagers have a little money over from extra pay during the harvest, so that the gipsies do not do badly by going the round of the villages at this time.  The village churches are decorated in a very delightful manner for these feasts:  such huge apples, carrots, and turnips in the windows and strewn about in odd places; lots of golden barley all round the pulpit and the font; and perhaps there will be bunches of grapes, such as grow wild on the cottage walls, hung round the pulpit.  Then what could look prettier against the white carved stone than the russet and gold leaves of the Virginia creeper? and these they freely use in the decorations.  If one wants to see good taste displayed in these days, one must go to simple country places to find it.  At Christmas the old Gothic fane is hung with festoons of ivy and of yew in the old fashion of our forefathers.

I paid a visit to my old friend John Brown the other day, as I thought he would be able to tell me something about the harvest feasts of bygone days.  He is a dear old man of some seventy-eight summers, though somewhat of the laudator temporis acti school; but what good-nature and sense of humour there is in the good, honest face!