this is a little dearer than London, the meat is probably more wholesome from being in such good air as we enjoy.  In wintertime the journey to town, half-an-hour by train, has a most bracing effect on those capable of bearing severe cold.  For the rest, the incapables are a real blessing to those who sell mustard-plasters and extra-sized pocket-handkerchiefs.  Our society is so select and refined that I verily believe Belgravia can show nothing like it!  Yours obediently,

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD.

Sir,—­The Suburbs are certainly delightful, if you have a good train service; but this you seldom get.  I do not complain of our Company taking three-quarters of an hour to perform the distance of eight and a half miles to the City, as this seems a good, average suburban rate, but I do think the “fast” train (which performs the distance in that time) might start a little later than 8.30 A.M.  Going in to business at 10.30 by an “ordinary” train, which stops at sixteen stations, and takes an hour and a half, becomes after a time rather monotonous.  It involves a painful “Rush in Urbe” to get through business in time to catch the 4.30 “express” back, a train which (theoretically) stops nowhere.

COUNTRY CUSSIN’.

Sir,—­No more London for me!  I’ve tried it, and know what it’s like.  I have found a delightful cottage, twenty miles from town, and mean to live in it always.  Do we ever have one of your nasty yellow fogs here?  Never!  Nothing more than a thick white mist, which rises from the fields and envelopes the house every night.  It is true that several of our family complain of rheumatism, and when I had rheumatic fever myself a month ago, I found it a little inconvenient being six miles from a doctor and a chemist’s shop.  But then my house is so picturesque, with an Early English wooden porch (which can be kept from falling to pieces quite easily by hammering a few nails in now and then, and re-painting once a week), and no end of gables, which only let the water into the bedrooms in case of a very heavy shower.  Then think of the delights of a garden, and a field (for which I pay L20 a year, and repair the hedges), and chickens!  I don’t think I have spent more than L50 above what I should have done in London, owing to the necessity of fitting up chicken-runs and buying a conservatory for my wife, who is passionately fond of flowers.  Unfortunately my chickens are now moulting, and decline to lay again before next March; so I bring back fresh eggs from town, and, as my conservatory is not yet full, flowers from Covent Garden; and I can assure you that, until you try it, you cannot tell the amount of pleasure and exercise which walking a couple of miles (the distance of my cottage from the station), laden with groceries and other eatables, can be made to afford.  Yours chirpily,

FIELD-FARE.

* * * * *

GOOD FOR SPORT!—­A well-known chartered accountant, with a vulpine patronymic, complains of the unkind treatment he recently received in Cologne at the hands of the German police.  He should be consoled by the thought, that his persecution marked in those latitudes the introduction of Fox-hunting.