COUNTRY LIFE
Country Market The war has robbed many country markets, especially in the south, of their clap-trap. The sight of a country labourer buying a suit of reach-me-downs from Whitechapel (" Fits you perfectly, Sir, perfectly. No? Now I tell you what I'll do, Sir —") has vanished ; the sellers of paragoric can no longer make the trip; the banana-boys and the rhyming-sellers of underwear, the best students of feminine psychology anywhere (" When I went to Sydney, ladies, on my floating kidney! "), are there no longer. These foreign trappings, dropping away, have left the original core of the market to itself. The produce market, the place where any countryman can sell anything from a bunch of primroses to a bushel of quinces, flourishes as it appears never to have done before. In October the market floor shone with a glow of broad colour that would have delight xl Van Gogh. Fiery apples, blue-green rosettes of cab- bages, carrots like torches, golden skips of quinces, pots of primula and chrysanthemum, a stray cock-pheasant, silvery shallots, rose-tinted potatoes, combs of honey, spring bulbs, foamy seas of cauliflowers were all evidence of a nation in the throes of advanced starvation. All were sold in an atmosphere brisk with humour. "Show the last case of dessert apples," said the auctioneer to the porter, and got the reply : "No dessert left, Sir. Only eaters."
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