The cautious explorer of the marsh is careful to carry his nosebag with him, in the shape of some pocketable light refreshment, for the inns are infrequent, and the farm-folk, although hospitable enough, cannot always supply even the most modest demands of the stranger. Milk even--that unfailing product of a farm--is not always to be had, for the morning's supply may already have been sent off to the nearest railway station, and the five o'clock afternoon milking hour be not yet come. Moreover, farmers generally entering into a contract to supply a certain quantity cannot always afford to sell even a single glass. As for farmhouse bread and cheese, dismiss from your mind all thoughts of home-baked bread or local cheese in these times. The bread will often be a tin loaf from the baker's of Ashford, Hythe, or Littlestone; and the cheese--well, here is the apology of a farmer's wife: "I'm sorry we've no Dutch cheese, but here is some American; we think it very good." Can such things be? you ask. _Can_ they be, indeed? Are they not the commonplace experiences of all those few who really explore the innermost recesses of the country and feel the pulse and count the heart-beats of rural life? Is there not something radically wrong with England when a farmer's wife can make such a speech as that, and not think it strange? In the dying words of the late Lord Winchilsea, a true friend of farming, "God save Agriculture!" when in an English dairying district the farmers buy Dutch and American cheese. But that is not the only alien article in the farmhouses. Tawdry German glassware and "ornamental" china "decorate" the "best parlour," and the doleful wailings of American organs on Sundays give evidence of the religious instincts of the farmer's family and agonise the unhappy wayfarer. Old England is certainly being cosmopolitanised (good word!) in every direction; here is another instance, for what do we see on the barn-walls and posting-stations but the announcement, addressed to the rustics, of a "Fête Champêtre" to be held in aid of a church restoration fund. In the days before Hodge left off saying "beant" and took to using the more cultivated phrase "is not," like the Squire and the Parson, he would--supposing him able to read at all--have asked, wonderingly, "What be this 'ere Feet Shampeter?"--and that would have been a very learned Squire or Parson who could have correctly explained the meaning. CHAPTER VIII OLD AND NEW ROMNEY AND DYMCHURCH