VIII. In these half-village half-towns you may chance on a busy market
day to come across a great building abutting on the street, and may
listen to the organ and the chant; there is incense and gorgeous
ceremony, the golden tinkle of the altar-bell. Bow your head, it is the
host; cross yourself, it is the mass. The butcher and the dealer are busy
with the sheep, but it is a saint's day. By-and-by no doubt we shall have
a village Lourdes at home, and miracles and pilgrimages and offerings and
shrines: the village will be right glad to see the pilgrims, if only they
come from the West End and have money in the purse. The village would be
very glad indeed of a miracle to bring it a shower of gold.




THE COUNTRY-SIDE: SUSSEX.


I

On the wall of an old barn by the great doors there still remains a
narrow strip of notice-board, much battered and weather-beaten: 'Beware
of steel ----' can be read, the rest has been broken off, but no doubt it
was 'traps.' 'Beware of steel traps,' a caution to thieves--a
reminiscence of those old days which many of our present writers and
leaders of opinion seem to think never existed. When the strong labourer
could hardly earn 7_s_. a week, when in some parishes scarcely half the
population got work at all, living, in the most literal sense, on the
parish, when bread was dear and the loaf was really life itself, then
that stern inscription had meaning enough. The granaries were full, the
people half starved. The wheat was threshed by the flail in full view of