JULY 123 



even he could "do wi'out us." I shall not go to our 

 feast again, for although I like to see the rustic 

 enjoy himself, I do not care to meet him in his cups. 

 The sight is not a pretty one. 



And yet it is wonderful when one comes to con- 

 sider the vast improvement that a few years have 

 worked in this matter. The agricultural labourer 

 may not yet be a sober man, but he is infinitely more 

 sober than he used to be when I was a girl, and the 

 best sign of all is in the fact that public opinion is 

 dead against him when he is given to indulgence in 

 too much liquor. Formerly the thing was so much 

 a matter of course that there appeared to be no 

 difference, or at any rate very little, between the 

 uniformly steady man and the man who was given 

 to an occasional " breaking out," in the estimation 

 of his neighbours of his own rank. But education 

 and a general tendency to level up have done 

 wonders in raising the standard of public opinion, 

 and the man who only indulges in an occasional 

 debauch is looked upon almost as coldly as the 

 hopeless sot who spends every night and half his 

 earnings at the public-house. 



The rustic is a curious and amusing study when 

 he first begins to feel the craving for self-improve- 

 ment, especially if the time for such craving has 

 been delayed until his youth is past. The process 

 is somewhat uncomfortable while it is yet a process, 

 for it seems necessarily to involve the giving up of 

 old ways and modes of thought simply because they 

 are old of throwing off recognised customs merely 

 because they have existed too long. The man of 

 advanced views in a country village has no means 



