The Pickeronian can no longer call himself remote in the sense of communication with the rest of the world, for the North-Eastern Railway takes him to York in little more than an hour, and from that great station he can choose his route to London and other centres by the Great Northern, the Great Central, or by the Midland Railway, and he can return from King's Cross to Pickering in about five hours. But this ease of communication seems to have made less impression upon the manners and customs of the town and neighbourhood than might have been imagined. It may perhaps show itself in the more rapid importation from London of a popular street tune or in the fashions of dress among the women-kind, but there are still great differences in the ways of living of the country folk and in the relations of squire and peasant. Superstitions still linger among the moorland folk, and the custom of placing a plate of salt upon the breast of one who is dying is still continued here and there in a covert fashion. Clocks are still stopped, fires raked out, and looking-glasses turned to the wall at the moment of death, but such acts of deference to the world of fancy are naturally only seen by those who have intimate experience of the cottage life of these parts, and the casual visitor sees no traces of them. The town at one time had a newspaper of its own. It was known as the _Pickering Mercury_, and was started in the summer of 1857; but it perhaps found Scarborough competition too much for it, for now it is almost forgotten, and an evening paper produced in the big watering-place is shouted round the streets of the town every night. The changes that the present century may witness will possibly work greater transformations than any that have gone before, and not many years hence this book will no doubt be described as belonging to the rough and ready, almost primitive times of the early part of the twentieth century. The historian of a hundred years hence will sigh for the complete picture of daily life at Pickering at the present day, which we could so easily give, while he at that very moment may be failing to record the scenes of his own time that are to him so wofully commonplace. CHAPTER XIII _Concerning the Villages and Scenery of the Forest and Vale of Pickering_ "Wide horizons beckoning, far beyond the hill, Little lazy villages, sleeping in the vale, Greatness overhead The flock's contented tread An' trample o' the morning wind adown the open trail." H.H. Bashford. [Illustration: The Market Cross at Thornton-le-Dale. The stocks are quite modern, replacing the old ones which were thrown away when the new ones were made. ]