Farmers do see even this done, and live through
it without open warfare; but they should not be put to such
trials of temper or pocket too often.
And now for my friend the hunting farmer in person, the
sportsman whom I always regard as the most indispensable adjunct
to the field, to whom I tender my spare cigar with the most
perfect expression of my good will. His dress is nearly always
the same. He wears a thick black coat, dark brown breeches, and
top boots, very white in colour, or of a very dark mahogany,
according to his taste. The hunting farmer of the old school
generally rides in a chimney-pot hat; but, in this particular,
the younger brethren of the plough are leaving their old habits,
and running into caps, net hats, and other innovations which, I
own, are somewhat distasteful to me. And there is, too, the
ostentatious farmer, who rides in scarlet, signifying thereby
that he subscribes his ten or fifteen guineas to the hunt fund.
But here, in this paper, it is not of him I speak. He is a man
who is so much less the farmer, in that he is the more an
ordinary man of the ordinary world. The farmer whom we have now
before us shall wear the old black coat, and the old black hat,
and the white top boots, rather daubed in their whiteness; and
he shall be the genuine farmer of the old school.
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