So few were the conveniences of life that men had often to leave the road and cross several fields out of their way to light their pipes at a burning couch-heap or lime-kiln.
They prided themselves then in that hill district that they had neither a cow nor a poor married man in the parish.

There was no cow, because it was entirely a corn-growing place.

The whole resident population was not much over a score, and of the labourers they boasted not one was married.

For in those old times each parish kept its own poor, and consequently disliked an increase of the population.
The farmers met in vestry from time to time to arrange for the support of the surplus labour; the appearance of a fresh family would have meant a fresh tax upon them.

They regarded additional human beings as an incumbrance.
The millers sent their flour round the country then on packhorses; waggons and carts were not so common as now, while the ways, when you once quitted the main road, were scarcely passable.