The Cheyenne daily leader. [volume] (Cheyenne, Wyo.) 1870-1884, 1883-12-09
RURAL ENGLAND.
Hearty Old Fashioned Poiteneas
and Fresh Unaffected Country
Girls


London Letter in New York Sun.
Almost the first thing you are told when
rou take up your temporary residence In
5iankshire, is that your comments must be
Suarded and your conversation diplomatic,
rs all the families within a visiting radius OF
twenty miles are related to each other. And
70 they are, for a death puts all the country
ade in mourning, while a wedding calls out
Universal sympathy. Along the route of the
bridal cortege, every cottage or farm house
hangs out its little decoration, and in the
own every tradesman has his flag, his bunch
If flowers, or his bit of bunting, for has he
not catered for the wants of the young couple
rom their christening upward
Visitors and invitations promptly fow In
ipon the new conner with a hearty old-fash-
oned politeness. Dinner parties are not pop
liar. In the summer other gatherings are
preferred; and in winter or autumn the male
PORTION OF the community, the men who have
oeen shooting and hunting for seven or eight
hours, refuse to don the tail coat and white
dc and drive ten miles for q acrimonious
neal. Moreover, coachmen and grooms,
lard worked by their attendance on the ex-
icting hunter tmeaning the quadruped), turn
rusty at being kept out till the small hours
'or social duties, although they are ever
'eady to turn out at 1 a. m whom it is ne
,essary to ride eighteen miles to be at a meet
or club hunting at 8 In the morning.
The girls the strong, fresh, healthy, un-
Affected girls of Blanlcshire-seem to exist
IN lawn tennis, with an occasional trial at
:ricket, In which manly sport they are no
mean adopts. But tennis is the inevitable,
he universal, the al~i-engrossing game. In
front of the low, broad, many-windowed.
sreeper-grown houses of the gentry, spread
he well-kept lawns, smooth as carpets, soft
md springy as moss, and across their green
sxpanse are stretched as many nets as the
accurate measurement of the courts will
allow. There from morning till sunset the
balls fly, sent over by strong, supple wrists,
while the air echoes to reiterations of the
tennis slang. The men of all ages and de-
nominations are clad in their lannels, and,
like the girls, wear the fiat India rubber
soled shoe, for on no account must the adj
mirably kept turf be cut up. While the
game progresses the strangers and the nom
players are piled with tea and the thinnest of
Dread and butter.
At no hour between 3 and O can you pay a
visit in the country without the neat silver
service being brought In, and the rites of 5
'clock tea complied with. hen you are
shown over the house by the kind hostess,
and gladden. her soul by genuine admiration
Of the rare bits of china, the quaint-carved
balusters of oaken s~taircases, odd recesses,
curious old e~ngTavings, older and more
curious books in gigantic bindings and
colossal type. Among these. in strange dis
s~onnnce, and yet Enthusiastically the index to
the keynote of courtly minds, shines the red
binding of all the peerages and volumes ded-
icated by Burke, Debret and others to the
nobility and gentry. Some are in threu
volumes, others fat and ~voluminou like a
commercial directory, others only pocket
editions OF the same. Each family knows its
own lineage and descent of every other.
What the New Testament was to the old Cow
%enanters, the printed record of his ancestors
is to the British la~ndowner-his wade mecum,
his guide, his fundamental dogma. Some.
times of two brothers one only figures IN The
Landed Gentry" The other has lost his
claims to appear in the "Livre dor for he
has embraced trade and become a broker or
brewer.