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No one has skated who has not used skates, on the model of ski as a mode of motion, as a method of travelling pleas- antly from place to place. The dykes are as rectangular and as arithmetically named as the streets and avenues of New York. When you ask your way, you are told to take "the 16 foot till it cuts the 40 foot " ; and perhaps it needs a native eye to find the higher beauty in a ditch that is a straight line, generally provided with high banks, shutting out most of the view. And these banks may be hard to climb. We scaled them in one place to ask for meat and drink at an isolated inn, only to be told that there was " nothing in the house but a half-quartern loaf to last over Sunday." Incidentally, the innkeeper, a woman, had never been further than five miles from her home, and that only in frost-time ! Most of the Fen people are home-keeping, partly because their land is the richest in England, partly because so few people from outside disturb their peace. The outsiders make as big a mistake as the home-keepers. For the Fens at all seasons have peculiar individuality.
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