It was at Tisbury that Rudyard Kipling wrote some of his stories after leaving India, and there can be little doubt that after some years of absence in the East the return to things desperately dear and familiar and intimate exercised a strong effect upon his thoughts and writing, and prepared a way for his delicately fashioned pictures of the Old Country in _Puck of Pook's Hill_ and _Rewards and Fairies_. At Barford St Martin I had the misfortune to burst the back tube and tyre of my motor cycle, and that is the real reason I arrived at Tisbury. I wheeled my machine to the Green Dragon, hoping for a lift to a place where I could get fixed up with a new tyre. A large wagon was standing outside the inn, and as it bore the name, Stephen Weekes, Tisbury, upon it, I penetrated to the bar-parlour, thinking that I might induce the driver to take me with the machine into that village. The owner of the wagon was sitting inside with two large bottles of stout before him. He was a burly fellow in shirt-sleeves and a broad straw hat. I saw he was fifty or thereabouts--not a mere wagoner, but a small farmer who would have answered to the description of Farmer Oak by Thomas Hardy in his opening to _Far from the Madding Crowd_. He was of a more jovial type than most Dorset men I have met, and after submitting to his fire of questions I asked him gently, in jest, if he would require any assistance with his two bottles. "Aye," he answered, quizzing at me with his merry eyes. "I shall require another bottle to assist me, I think." He looked at me a moment with seriousness and then he laughed to the point of holding his sides. He slapped his knees, shouted, roared and almost rolled with merriment. I looked at the farmer, not without a feeling of admiration. It was perhaps a very poor jest, you will say. But how well a simple jest became the fellow; how gloriously he laughed. Down in my heart I knew that no man could laugh as he did and at the same time possess a mean mind. He was as broad as the earth, and his laughter was just as limitless. Talk of good things: there may be something finer than a hearty laugh--there may be--perhaps.... At this moment he called for two glasses, and explained to the landlord that now he would drink out of a glass, seeing that he was in company. "Then tell me," I said, "why do you drink out of the bottle when you are alone?" "Why, you don't get no virtue out of the beer 'thout you drink it out of the bottle. No, fay! Half of the strength is gone like winky when you pour it into a glass." "I believe you are right," I said, "and I especially commend you for drinking beer. Ale is a great and generous creature; it contains all health, induces sleep o' nights, titillates the digestion and imparts freshness to the palate." "'Tis the only drink that will go with bread and cheese and pickling cabbage," dashed in the farmer.