That was the Fifteenth Century, and the Twentieth is not unlike it. In this present Century there were two men living in Lustleigh parish who have now gone away--men of assured position and independent means. One man lived in a valley, and the other on a hill-side just above; and one man had a garden, and the other had a dog. When the dog got busy with bones, it went off to the garden and carried out its burials and exhumations there. At least, that is what the owner of the garden said, and what the owner of the dog denied; and the contention was so sharp between them that one of them summoned the other before the magistrates at Newton to be bound over to keep the peace. In a humbler state of life there were two old ladies who kept chicken; and whenever one of them fed her chicken, her neighbour’s chicken came over in a mass and scrambled for the food. It was a thing that chicken would naturally do; but she felt certain that her neighbour egged them on. One day she seemed to be in heavenly happiness, and she explained to me, “I be a-thinkin’ of that woman there, when I shall see her in the torments.” I asked where she was going to see that, and she answered with asperity, “Where be I a-goin’? Why, Abram’s bosom, o’ course.” Her thoughts were on the parable of Lazarus and Dives. People of her generation did not consider eternal life worth having without eternal punishment for everybody they disliked. In country places little things seem big, as there is nothing big to dwarf them. I have seen a man throw down his work and come rushing across the valley, uttering imprecations all the way--as someone said of him, “could hear’n comin’ up a-buzzin’ like an aireyplain”--and it was only because he saw a trespasser, not a murder or a fire or anything else commensurate. In big towns they have newspapers coming out in fresh editions all day long, and placards of the news, and boys to shout it out; and they cannot quite ignore the ‘mysteries’ and ‘allegations’ and the ‘startling revelations.’ These may be trumpery enough and quite untrue, but at all events they do not set good neighbours quarrelling.