But the tables were turned morally, if not actually, by a friend of mine, who certainly scored off a railway company. My friend's waggon, with two horses and a load of hay, was passing over a level crossing on his land, when the London express came into view slinging downhill in all the majesty of triumphant speed, but far enough away to be brought up in time, ignominiously and abruptly. The railway company wrote my friend a letter of remonstrance suggestive of pains and penalties, and telling him that his waggoner should have made sure of the safety of crossing before attempting it--not an easy thing to do at this particular place. My friend replied that his right of way existed centuries before the railway was dreamed of, that the crossing was a concession for the company's convenience, it had saved the expense of a bridge, and that his hay was an urgent matter in view of the weather; and that uninterrupted harvesting was of more importance than the punctuality of their passengers. I have sometimes passed through a remote village on a Sunday where the obsequies of a pig were to be seen in full view from the road; these were usually places where the church was in an adjoining mother-parish, and of course there are times when, for reasons of health or perhaps more correctly ill-health, it is impossible to defer the ceremony. As a rule, I should imagine that greater privacy is sought, at any rate so far as the public point of view is concerned. One remembers the story of the man doing some Sunday carpentering; his wife expostulated with him as a Sabbath breaker; he replied that in driving in the nails he could not help making some noise; "then why," said she, "don't you use screws?" An old Dorset labourer who helped with the removal of the pig-wash, and did other small jobs for successive tenants of mine at a furnished cottage on my land in Hampshire, invariably estimated the social status and resources of each new tenant by the consistency of the wash. When some rather extravagant occupiers were in possession, he reported them as, "Quite the right sort; their wash is real good, thick stuff." The villagers at Aldington did not smoke their bacon, but, as it usually hung in the kitchen not far from the big open hearth, and as the place was often full of fragrant wood smoke, the bacon acquired a pleasant suggestion of the smoked article of the southern counties. The cottagers rarely complained of the smoky state of their kitchens, consoling themselves with the saying, "'Tis better to be smoke-dried nor starred [starved with the cold] to death." Bacon naturally suggests eggs; many of the villagers kept a few fowls which sometimes strayed into my orchards; as a rule, I made no objection, but it was not pleasing, when the apples were over-ripe and dropping from the trees, to notice the destructive marks of their beaks on some extra fine Blenheim oranges.