COUNTRY LIFE
IN his seventy-fourth year W., who used to be a blacksmith and now retired to do all kinds of odd jobs from helping at harvest tO laying out gardens, is as strong as the blackthorn-tree. He is no perhaps as nimble as he was ten years ago, but he clumps off to work in the morning with a hand-rolled cigarette in the corner of his mouth and a cap perched on top of his head. He is always dressed for the job in strong corduroys and a tweed jacket tied at the waist wit string, and he always wears knee-straps. His boots are the same of hard, hob-nailed ones he wore years ago. He never wears an overcoat If it rains he drapes a sack about his shoulders. When there is a down pour, the sack makes a hood of the kind coalmen sometimes use W. works as hard as he did when a boy by all accounts. I have see him with his jacket off, his braces dangling about his hips and trousers supported by the broad leather belt he always has round hit waist, driving in a fence-post with a sledgehammer or lifting boulders to make a rockery. He reminds me of strong men who used to work about the farm- when I was a boy, men whose delight was in physical effort, cutting corn or digging peat, eating scone and cheese with relish and drinking buttermilk to keep themselVes going,.
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