The opening of Chapter I
George Fielding cultivated a small farm in Berkshire.
This position is not so enviable as it was. Years ago, the farmers of England, had they been as intelligent as other traders, could have purchased the English soil by means of the huge percentage it offered them.
But now, I grieve to say, a farmer must be as sharp as his neighbors, or like his neighbors he will break. What do I say? There are soils and situations where, in spite of intelligence and sobriety, he is almost sure to break; just as there are shops where the lively, the severe, the industrious, the lazy, are fractured alike.
This last fact I make mine by perambulating a certain great street every three months, and observing how name succeeds to name as wave to wave.