AN OLD SAYING the case—an ever-possible contingency, by the way—with cheapened ocean transit and competition with new countries, land in Old England will no longer produce a profit to the modern tenant as well as to the landlord, and pay big tithes besides. It must be borne in mind that the tenant farmer of to-day has progressed like the rest of the world. He needs must possess a certain capital, and no longer is he or his family content with the simple life or pleasures of his predecessors. His wife, son, and daughters will not work on the farm, nor superintend the dairy, as of old; they all expect, and I think rightly expect, in an age when Board School children learn the piano and other accomplishments, a little more refinement and ease. And if this be so, I take it that the only way to solve the difficulty of making the land pay is somehow to get back the disappearing yeoman: the pride of possession will alone ensure prosperous farming. A local saying, possibly pertinent to the question, was repeated to me one day by a large tenant farmer in the Midlands, who had lost by farming well. It runs thus:
He who improves may flit,
He who destroys may sit.
And much truth underlies the proverbs of the countryside. Now a yeoman would not have to "flit" for improving his freehold, and a man does not generally destroy his own.
Whilst our thoughts had been wandering thus, the dog-cart had kept steadily on its way, and our reverie was broken by finding ourselves in the
