Seven years have passed since I set myself to write the first of the following essays. I very much doubted whether the public would care to read it; I had a serious misgiving as to whether any editor would accept it. I never thought of its obtaining the wide circulation which it received. The critics have been very lenient with me, more than lenient, and some of my readers - entire strangers to me - have addressed to me such generous and cordial expressions of sympathy and goodwill that I cannot but believe that my rural friends will be and are the better for-my humble attempt to plead their cause. I am not so foolish and vain as to suppose that any direct influence can be effected by half-a-dozen essays in a periodical - however wide may be its circulation - in half-a-dozen years.