SONG FOR SIXPENCE • By Geoffrey Pollett . Here is the
pedlar's road-book (Longmans, $s. geod reading for all who take the road. At- the- police station in Hay ward's Heath, on a certain Monday in July, Mi. Pollen - obtained " a licence to peddle poetry," and with a knapsack. full of broadsheets of his own poet*: he : Set- out to test the market for his wares. The plan was to walk from shire to shire, paying his way as he went by selling his verse at sii9seace a sheet, hoping to take 4s. 8d. aday,and to live on, that slender return, eked out by the kindness of men. With an eye for huidscape, and a palate for beer, and a heart (sometimes a fainting heart) for the road, he made his way from Sussex to Land's End, and back to Sussex again by Bath, Gloucester, Stratford-on4von and-the-Chilterns_ Winzhester_lielound as cold as charity, Somerset " full of oaks, buxom smiling girls and devilishly awkward stiles?' Swindon didn't tempt him to linger, but the Cotswolds were " a great spread table set for a fool's feasting?' On his way, he passed the villages of Stream and Monksilvei, ;,,Broadelyst and Grimspound—he missed St. Just-in-RoSeland, but he lingered in Huccaby, Lansallos, Lensdon and Looe. He found that " the company of two girls (but only for an hour or two I), though it shortened my stride, didn't drag the miles out any longer " ; and he found, too, that there are all kinds of human nature to be met on a day's march, some of " peevish snodulence," others with open hearts and purses. Of these, and of much else that makes England what she is, you will read in this engaging book which it would be a pity to miss.
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