text:  We were all very different from what we were; we had a railway within half an hour's drive; we had a Methodist chapel in the village; we had a clergyman who preached in his surplice and would have had a hurl off a lame donkey if he had ventured into the saddle; the hounds were given up; you were asked to dinner at half-past seven and got home again by ten; rather a changed state of affairs since old Frank kept the ball alive and Parson Holt rode his grey nag over bank and fence and we had two packs within ten miles and no Methodists in the village and no railroad in the county and every thing was exactly as it ought to be; and we dined at five and got home--when it pleased Heaven