Now I cared little about all this political pother. While I listened and could not avoid listening, I was like one who hears a military band with loud braying of brass instruments and rub-a-dub of drums, but is at the same time giving an attentive ear to some small sound issuing from some leafy hiding-place in the vicinity—the delicate small warble of a willow-wren, let us say. And the willow-wren in this case was the real heart of the people, not all this imported artificial noise in the air. That alone was what interested me; it was a relief to escape from the ridiculous hubbub into one of the small farm-houses, to live with the people in a house that never saw a newspaper, where the farmer and his wife minded their farm and were very proud of getting the highest price in the market for their butter.
Life on these small farms is incredibly rough. One may guess what it is like from the outward aspect of such places. Each, it is true, has its own individual character, but they are all pretty much alike in their dreary, naked and almost squalid appearance. Each, too, has its own ancient Cornish name, some of these very fine or very pretty, but you are tempted to rename them in your own mind Desolation Farm, Dreary Farm, Stony Farm, Bleak Farm, and Hungry Farm. The farm-house is a small low place and invariably built of granite, with no garden or bush or flower about it. The one I stayed at was a couple of centuries old, but no one had ever thought of growing anything, even a marigold, to soften its bare harsh aspect. The house itself could hardly be distinguished from the outhouses clustered round it. Several times on coming back to the house in a hurry and not exercising proper care I found I had made for the wrong door and got into the cow-house, or pig-house, or a shed ol some sort, instead of into the human habitation. The cows and other animals were all about and you came through deep mud into the living-room. The pigs and fowls did not come in but were otherwise free to go where they liked.
[Original]
The rooms were very low; my hair, when I stood erect, just brushed the beams; but the living-room or kitchen was spacious for so small a house, and had the wide old open fireplace still common in this part of the country. Any other form of fireplace would not be suitable when the fuel consists of furze and turf.
[Original]
Here I had the feeling of being back in one of those primitive cattle-breeding establishments, or estancias as they are called, on the South American pampas, where every one, dogs and cats included, lived in the big smoke-blackened kitchen by day, and the fuel was dried stalks of Cardoon thistle and various other stout annuals, with dried cow-dung for peat, and greasy strong-smelling bones of dead horses, cows and sheep. It was like an illusion, so that I was continually on the point of addressing the children playing on the floor in Spanish, or in gaucho lingo, to name every dog "Pechicho" and call "Mees-mees" instead of "Pussy-pussy" to a cat.