108 OCTOBER IN BROADBAND. 



* A rum fellow is that Jim Trett,' he remarks, when the weather and divers 

 other subjects have been commented upon, 'and he's but a type of your unadulterated 

 fenmen, who, alas! are a generation which these days of breechloaders, railways, 

 drainage, and School Boards will soon supersede by a mongrel following. 'The 

 fashion of this world passeth away,' I've heard our parson say, and it's a downright 

 pity that your fenman has been included in the category. Education in particu- 

 lar is playing the excuse me, sir, I'd nearly dropped an old-fashioned English 



word with a ' u' in the middle of it, havoc, I mean, with their strange super- 

 stitions ; it is weeding out many of their queer, old-time provincialisms, and will 

 some day convert their quaint Norfolk dialect into dull, terse, unmelodious English. 



' In Marshall's ' Kural Economy of Norfolk,' written over a hundred years ago, 

 he tells us that ( there is an alertness in the servants and labourers of Norfolk 

 which I have not observed in any other district.' Then he says a lot more, and in 

 contrasting them with their Kentish duplicates, makes regular models, of them 

 as to manners, gait, and air. He might have been a Norfolk man himself. Now, 

 I don't go so far as that if I am to compare your Norfolkese of then with their 

 descendants of to-day. I'll grant you it will be difficult to find others to beat them 

 at honesty, sobriety, and workishness. Times have altogether altered, too, since 

 then. A hundred years ago Hodge was a boarder with his ' maaster,' he was bred 

 and born on the ' faarm,' worked there all his days, and 'deed 'there, and perhaps 

 was happier on his five pounds ten per annum, and his board and lodging, than he 

 is to-day. Perhaps not, for he's certainly freer to-day ; he has his franchise, and 

 can please himself in his choice of masters but then, increased pay doesn't go 

 for everything for if he gets thirteen shillings a week, there has been a corres- 

 ponding rise in what he has to spend. Times have gone against him, and ma- 

 chinery and foreign competition have seriously handicapped him. Many a fine 

 young fellow's had to budge, and emigrate, go to sea, or find a billet in the over- 

 crowded towns. Those who follow the sea, and alternate it with work ashore, seem 

 to do fairly well; but a fisherman's calling is an uncertain affair. Many of the 

 young strapping fellows are now following the North Sea herring fishery. 



' Here, landlord, bring us some eggs and bacon, and a jug of coffee.' So orders 

 our talkative friend. 



' While we're discussing these matters, we'll improve the time, and ere after- 

 noon has arrived the wind may have dropped a bit. Just look at that troop of larks 

 flying over! They're Norwegians immigrating to our less inhospitable climate for 

 the winter. 



