Now, sleeping out of doors in October, if you have ever tried it, is a very different thing from sleeping out of doors in June, and as for rural hospitality--well, if you are of a sensitive constitution you shrink from obtruding yourself, an alien apparition, upon the embarrassed and embarrassing rural domesticities.

Besides, to be quite honest, rural table-talk, except in Mr.Hardy's novels or pastoral poetry, is, to say the least, lacking in variety.

Indeed, if the truth must be told, the conversation of country people, generally speaking, and an occasional, very occasional, character or oddity apart, is undeniably dull, and I hope it will not be imputed to me for hardness of heart that, after some long-winded colloquy or endless reminiscence, sententious and trivial, I have thought that Gray's famous line should really have been written--"the long and tedious annals of the poor." But my heart smites me with ingratitude toward some kindly memories as I write that--memories of homely welcome, simple and touching and dignified.

Surely I am not writing so of the genial farmer on whom we came one lunch hour as he was stripping corn in his yard.
"Missus," he called to the house a few yards away, "can you find any lunch for two good-looking fellows here ?" The housewife came to the door, scanned us for a second, and replied in the affirmative.

As we sat down to table, our host bowed his head and said a simple grace for the bacon and cabbage, pumpkin-pie, cheese and tea we were about to receive; and the unexpected old-fashioned rite, too seldom encountered nowadays, came on me with a fresh beauty and impressiveness, which made me feel that its discontinuance is a real loss of gracious ritual in our lives, and perhaps even more.