straw is short the cast is generally good, and _vice versa_.
In the first case the machine runs evenly, and gives out a contented
and cheerful hum, but in the second it remonstrates with intermittent
grunts and groans. Even when the yield is pretty good, the voice of
the machine is not nearly so encouraging to the imaginative farmer,
when prices are low, as when prices are up.

Throughout the course of my farming the gloomy note of the machine was
that which predominated, but in the spring of 1877, on the prospect of
complications with Russia, when wheat rose to I think nearly 70s. a
quarter, it was again a cheerful sound, for I had several ricks of the
previous year's crop on hand. I do not remember that bread rose to
anything like the extent that occurred in the Great War. Forty years
has marvellously widened the gap between the raw material and the
finished product--that is, between producer and consumer; immense
increases have taken place in the cost of labour employed by miller
and baker, and rates and other expenses are much higher.

Farmers do not lose much in "bad debts"; they have to lay out their
capital in cash payments so long before the return that they are not
expected to give extended credit when sales take place, and for corn
payment is made fourteen days after the sale is effected. I had one
rather narrow escape. I had sold 150 sacks of wheat to a miller, and
it had been delivered to the mill, but one evening I had a note from
him to say that his credit was in question on the local markets. "A
nod," I thought, "was as good as a wink to a blind horse"; so next
morning I sent all my teams and waggons, and by night had carted all
the wheat away, except twenty sacks, which had already been ground.
The miller paid eventually 10s. in the L, so my loss was only a matter
of about L10.

A similar "chap money," or return of a trifle in cash from seller to
buyer, as that in vogue in horse-dealing, still exists in selling
corn; it goes by the indefinite name of "custom," and in
Worcestershire it was a fixed sum of 1s. in every sixty bushels of
wheat, and 1s. in every eighty bushels of barley; each of these
quantities formed the ancient load. I think the payment of "custom"
arose when tarpaulin sheets were first used instead of straw to cover
the waggon loads. The straw never returned; it was the miller's
perquisite, and its value paid for the beer to which the carters were
treated at the mill; but the tarpaulin