94 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



than the emigration agent. Other young fellows borrowed 

 or purchased the high bicycle ; and this big wheel was not 

 only the symbol, but the actual wheel of fortune which 

 revolutionised the social life of the countryside. 



The social customs deriving their enduring qualities 

 from stationary conditions of life were dying out. No 

 longer did parties of men and girls contrive a raid upon a 

 widow in need, cheering her with a feast and leaving much 

 food behind them for the widow's cupboard. Sometimes 

 a fiddler or a player of the concertina would be found and 

 every man would bring his mug or cup and saucer besides 

 food for the feast, and if it was a moonlight night a dance 

 would spring up like magic. This custom was dying out, 

 and so was the dance in the barn following the village wed- 

 ding, with a fiddler on an up-turned tub and a jug of beer 

 by his side and tallow candles guttering down the stout 

 oaken pillars which supported the roof. 



Wayside public houses which throve on the carters who 

 pulled up their heavy loads of corn, or straw, or hay, or 

 cake, were left high and dry by the railroad on the one side 

 and the uncultivated fields on the other. The publican 

 reduced his staff and became more or less a small holder 

 or dealer, to keep himself alive. 



The wheelwright's trade languished with that of the 

 carpenter's and blacksmith's ; and how many picturesque 

 wheelwrights' yards shaded by trees with an amplitude of 

 roadside waste there used to be in the 'sixties and 'seventies. 

 The rake-maker began to disappear and with him the besom- 

 maker and the hurdle-maker would take up their tools and 

 seek work in the towns as rakes, brooms, hoops, hurdles and 

 gates commenced to be turned out by machinery in the town 

 timber-yards. The gossipy pedlar, the cottage woman's 

 newsvendor, was driven into the workhouse by the smart 

 traveller who drove out from the towns for orders. 



The migration of the " tradesman " class left village 

 life much poorer socially. It took the colour out of rural 

 life. Cricket and football clubs declined in spite of the 

 herculean efforts of athletic curates, and the inspiring exam- 

 ple of Charles Kingsley. Dreary England had taken the 



