Three Scenes by Stephen Kirby
2—' Clodhopper'
In these three scenes the author looks back at the work and pleasure of the country he knew as a child and has long since left. The scenes and characters are completely imaginary.
'No man having put his hand to the plough can look back ' is the lesson firmly grasped by the towns-man who, bent on re-discovering the countryside of his youth, ' takes over' from the ploughman and plods his way through a furrow which seems never-ending to his now-unaccustomed hands. Stephen Kirby sets his characters in a field in the Yorkshire Wolds and proves to the satisfaction of one of them that ' once a ploughman, always a ploughman ' is true, though it is afar cry now to the corduroy breeches, black leather leggings and hob-nailed boots of his boyhood days on the farm.