That is our village down to the ground. You could not persuade one of the aborigines that there is any place in England or outside it of greater importance than Thurswell, because there is no place of greater importance to the Thurswellian. An aged inhabitant was taken by his son to see the coronation procession, and when he was asked what it was like, replied, after a suitable pause, that it ran Thurs-well's Day very hard--Thurswell's Day is the name given to the First Sunday after Trinity, when the Free Foresters and Ancient Shepherds march to church in sashes, with a band made up of a fife, three flutes, a drum, a concertina, and a melodion. “Ay, neighbours, it ran Thurswell's Day hard,” he affirmed, and did not flinch from his statement in spite of the incredulous murmur that arose from the bench nearest the door, which was immediately suppressed by the landlord, who was apprehensive of a riot. Thurswell is a village of antiquity. Its name occurs in _Domesday Book_, where you may look in vain for any mention of Brindlington, that mushroom town of 60.000 inhabitants, which is nine miles to the north, or even of Broadminster, the Cathedral town, which is seven miles to the west. “Broadminster is where the Dean lives,” I was told by the landlord of the Wheatsheaf at Thurswell when I was making inquiries about the district, “and Brindlington is where the brewery is; but my father got his ale at Pipstone, and I get mine there too, though it's a blow to Brindlington, for in harvest the best part of a cask goes within a week.” There are several other villages within a mile or so of Thurswell, and the inhabitants of some are infatuated enough to believe that they are on a social, as well as a commercial, level with the people of Thurswell. This singular hallucination caused a good deal of friction on all sides in years gone by, and _the rapprochement_ that was eventually brought about between Thurswell and its neighbours by the thoughtfulness of a Rector, who preached a sermon on the vision of St. Peter and enjoined upon his hearers to remember that even though people have not been born in Thurswell they are still God's creatures, was a purely sentimental one, and did not last.