84 Customs of Cottagers. 



flames in the centre of the field. Doubtless there was 

 some historic basis for the story ; but the preacher 

 made it quite his own by the vigor and life of the 

 local coloring in which he clothed it, speaking of 

 the green grass, the flowers, the innocent sheep, 

 the fagots, and so on, bringing it home to the minds 

 of his audience to whom fagots and grass and sheep 

 were so well known. They worked themselves into 

 a state of intense excitement as the narrative ap- 

 proached its climax, till a continuous moaning formed 

 a deep undertone to the speaker's voice. Such men 

 are not paid, trained, or organized ; they labor from 

 goodwill in the cause. 



Now and then a woman, too, may be found who 

 lectures in the little cottage room where ten or fifteen, 

 perhaps twent}-, are packed almost to suffocation ; or 

 she pra}'s aloud and the rest respond. Sometimes, 

 no doubt, persons of little sincerity practise these 

 things from pure vanity and the ambition of preach- 

 ing for there is ambition in cottage life as else- 

 where ; but the men and women I speak of are 

 thoroughly in earnest. 



Cottagers have their own social creed and customs. 

 In their intercourse, one point which seems to be in- 

 sisted upon particularly is a previous knowledge or 

 acquaintance. The very people whose morals are 

 known to be none of the strictest and cottage 

 morality is sometimes very far from severe will 

 refuse, arid especially the women, to admit a strange 

 girl, for instance, to sleep in their house for ample 

 remuneration, even when introduced by really respect- 

 able persons. Servant-girls in the country where 

 railways even now are few and far between often 



