Waders—to touch for a moment upon another thing which characterises me only when prepared to angle—induce a certain deliberation of movement. Thus I have been addressed from behind as "old cockalorum" by a cyclist, who passed on his way with a hideous guffaw. The appearance of age, then, is funny. I suppose it is the board schools again. But time was when young Englishmen would not have cackled at the mere simulacrum of venerableness, for I am hardly middle-aged.
So, an object of ridicule, I make my rare encounters with the great intelligent world which lies beyond the bend in the valley (where the main line runs) and comes waggonetting it through my Elysium with a sneer for its cloddish rustics and a cat-call for old cockalorum. But how do these same cloddish rustics greet this side-splitting apparition that is William Caine? Do bucolic hee-haws burst from their large amiable mouths when we meet on the road? Does Sewsan lean shaking on the shoulder of Giles, Hodge, the while, rolling in agonies of mirth beneath the hawthorn? Not so. These folk, though they have never trod Cheapside, have knowledge that does not grow in cities. They are wise in their way—and foolish, doubtless, in their way; but their folly is not a discourteous folly, and their
