Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/309

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and its Green Border-Land.
295

gentry. It looked like a small quadrangular village of buildings, of which the mansion part constituted the two-story frontage. On coming up abreast of this front, we found it was an inn, and certainly it was capacious enough to accommodate a full company of cavalry, horses and all. It mounted for the insignia of its hospitalities "The Stewponey and Foley Arms;" a sign which might look very appetising to an amateur of the new dietary proposed in Paris, but which, let us hope, will never supersede "the roast beef of Old England" either in supper or song.

We overtook, half-way up a long hill, one of the great farm wagons of this country, loaded heavily with clay and drawn by three splendid gray horses, each with a hoof that would not go into a peck measure. The whole turn-out looked as if it belonged to a first-class farmer; wagon, horses, and harnesses were of the highest order of perfection. But I was peculiarly struck with that strange economy of forces which distinguishes English farmers, by such marked contrasts, from those of America. Of course it is natural, and perhaps inevitable, that the farmers of all countries should be the most conservative as to traditional habits; that they should cling with the most tenacious adhesion to systems for which they can give no better and no other reason than that their fathers and ancestors did the same before them.