One hears a frightful lot of nonsense about the Rural
Exodus and the degeneration wrought by town life upon our population. To
my mind, the English townsman, even in the slums, is infinitely better
spiritually, more courageous, more imaginative and cleaner, than his
agricultural cousin. I've seen them both when they didn't think
they were being observed, and I know. There was something about my
Wimblehurst companions that disgusted me. It's hard to define. Heaven
knows that at that cockney boarding-school at Goudhurst we were coarse
enough; the Wimblehurst youngsters had neither words nor courage for the
sort of thing we used to do--for our bad language, for example; but,
on the other hand, they displayed a sort of sluggish, real lewdness,
lewdness is the word--a baseness of attitude. Whatever we exiled urbans
did at Goudhurst was touched with something, however coarse, of romantic
imagination. We had read the Boys of England, and told each other
stories. In the English countryside there are no books at all, no songs,
no drama, no valiant sin even; all these things have never come or they
were taken away and hidden generations ago, and the imagination aborts
and bestialises. That, I think, is where the real difference against the
English rural man lies. It is because I know this that I do not share
in the common repinings because our countryside is being depopulated,
because our population is passing through the furnace of the towns. They
starve, they suffer, no doubt, but they come out of it hardened, they
come out of it with souls.

Of an evening the Wimblehurst blade, shiny-faced from a wash and with
some loud finery, a coloured waistcoat or a vivid tie, would betake
himself to the Eastry Arms billiard-room, or to the bar parlour of
some minor pub where nap could be played. One soon sickened of his slow
knowingness, the cunning observation of his deadened eyes, his idea of
a "good story," always, always told in undertones, poor dirty worm! his
shrewd, elaborate maneuvers for some petty advantage, a drink to the
good or such-like deal. There rises before my eyes as I write, young
Hopley Dodd, the son of the Wimblehurst auctioneer, the pride of
Wimblehurst, its finest flower, with his fur waistcoat and his bulldog
pipe, his riding breeches--he had no horse--and his gaiters, as he used
to sit, leaning forward and watching the billiard-table from under the
brim of his artfully tilted hat. A half-dozen phrases constituted