a place where, between nine and six, not
a single male human being is visible, all of them being in town? Some
people may call this dull; but I like it. Then everything is so cheap
in the Suburbs! I only pay L100 a year for a nice house in a street,
with a small bath-room, and a garden quite as large as a full-sized
billiard-table. People tell me I could get the same thing in London,
but of course a suburban street must be nicer than a London one.
We are just outside the Metropolitan main drainage system, and our
death-rate is rather heavy, but then our rates are light. My butcher
only charges me one-and-twopence a pound for best joints, and though
this is a little dearer than London, the meat is probably more
wholesome from being in such good air as we enjoy. In wintertime the
journey to town, half-an-hour by train, has a most bracing effect on
those capable of bearing severe cold. For the rest, the incapables
are a real blessing to those who sell mustard-plasters and extra-sized
pocket-handkerchiefs. Our society is so select and refined that I
verily believe Belgravia can show nothing like it! Yours obediently,

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD.

Sir,--The Suburbs are certainly delightful, if you have a good train
service; but this you seldom get. I do not complain of our Company
taking three-quarters of an hour to perform the distance of eight and
a half miles to the City, as this seems a good, average suburban rate,
but I do think the "fast" train (which performs the distance in that
time) might start a little later than 8.30 A.M. Going in to business
at 10.30 by an "ordinary" train, which stops at sixteen stations, and
takes an hour and a half, becomes after a time rather monotonous. It
involves a painful "Rush in Urbe" to get through business in time to
catch the 4.30 "express" back, a train which (theoretically) stops
nowhere.

COUNTRY CUSSIN'.

Sir,--No more London for me! I've tried it, and know what it's like.
I have found a delightful cottage, twenty miles from town, and mean to
live in it always. Do we ever have one of your nasty yellow fogs here?
Never! Nothing more than a thick white mist, which rises from the
fields and envelopes the house every night. It is true that several
of our family complain of rheumatism, and when I had rheumatic fever
myself a month ago, I found it a little inconvenient being six
miles from a doctor and a chemist's shop. But then my house is so
picturesque, with an Early Engli