Those who
have not lived in a village have no idea of the isolation possible even
in this nineteenth century, and with the telegraph brought to the local
post office. The swift message of the electric wire, and the slow transit
of the material person--the speed of the written thought, and the
slowness of the bodily presence--are in strange contrast.
When people do not move about freely commerce is practically at a
standstill. But if two passenger road trains, travelling at an average
speed of not more than eight miles an hour, one going up and the other
down, and connecting two or more market towns and lines of railway,
passed through the village, how different would be the state of things!
Ease of transit multiplies business, and, besides passengers, a large
amount of light material could thus be conveyed. There would be depots at
the central places, but such trains could stop to pick up travellers at
any gate, door, or stile. If the route did not go through every hamlet,
it would pass near enough to enable persons to walk to it and join the
carriages. No one objects to walk one mile if he can afterwards ride the
other ten. Besides these through trains, special trains could run on
occasions when numbers of people wanted to go to one spot, such as sheep
or cattle fairs and great markets. Large tracts of country look to one
town as their central place, not by any means always the nearest market
town; to such places, for instance, as Gloucester and Reading, thousands
resort in the course of the year from hamlets at a considerable distance.
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