DECEMBER 431 



and all his works ; ill-paid labour, poverty, pain, and the infinite un- 

 recorded tragedies of humble lives. God ? They have never found 

 Him. He must live beyond the workhouse wall— out there in the 

 graveyard — in the waterlogged holes which very shortly 



Or perhaps their reflections are confined to memories of the 

 untoothsome dinner of the yesterday and hopes of the meat pud- 

 ding and tobacco to-morrow. Who can tell ? It would be useless 

 to ask them. 



At Heckingham there is a yard where tramps, in payment of 

 their lodging, are set to break granite to be used in road repairs. 

 To-day I had a try at this granite breaking, and a poor hand I 

 made of the task. I hit hard and I hit softly, I hit with the grain 

 and across it, I tried the large and the small hammer. Asa result 

 flakes of sharp stone flew up and struck me smartly in the face, 

 but very little granite did I succeed in breaking. My companion 

 tried also, and after him the master, who said that he understood 

 the game, but neither of them did any better. I have come to the 

 conclusion that even in breaking stones there must be a hidden art. 



If I remember right, this tough northern granite was first intro- 

 duced in my own days of oflfice, or just before them, to provide occu- 

 pation for a really remarkable rogue — a ' master ' rogue, as they say 

 here — who, in those times, lived upon the rates. This man, who 

 was as strong as a horse, absolutely declined to do steady work. 

 Numerous were the attempts of the guardians to be rid of him ; 

 once, for instance, they paid his passage to Hull, whence he 

 promptly tramped back again to Heckingham. Then some 

 inventive genius bethought him of this hard granite, which proved 

 effectual, for he took his discharge. Not long after he reappeared, 

 and with him a widow whom he had married in the interval, 

 and eight of her children. That was his repartee to the granite. 

 Needless to explain the House was forced to extend its hospitality 

 to his ready-made family at the expense of the ratepayers of the 

 Union. 



Many stories are told of the misery that existed before the 

 passing of the present Poor Laws, but here is a fact illustrative of 



