/ Preach to the Parson, 149 



when you meet them ; but they touch their hats to me 

 because I stand them beer. And there you are just wrong ; 

 it is not the beer, it is because my friends and myself get up 

 the cricket, and readings and concerts, and so sometimes 

 amuse them in the winter ; and pardon my home truths, your 

 party do not inaugurate a single amusement amongst them 

 to gain a laugh from New Year's Day to the following 31st 

 of December. The fact is, parson, you do not understand 

 what 2/ow call "the working classes," for the simple reason 

 that you were brought up in a cockney parish in London, 

 and don't understand village folk. You go on circulating 

 tracts on drunkenness and gambling, directed against men 

 such as I have seen to-night. Now listen to me. My 

 friends and myself have been with those men — for players 

 or non-players they are cricketers to a man — at home and 

 in out matches, and there is not a man amongst them with 

 a tendency to drink. They hold their Saturday night club 

 at the Green Lion regularly from eight till half -past ten, 

 and as regularly they play penny cribbage and talk village 

 politics or cricket ; in fact, the match which I announcd to- 

 night will keep them going till it is time to go home. I 

 know all you say about putting the money by in the 

 savings-bank instead of going to the Green Lion, where 

 probably each man will pay sixpence or eightpence ; but do 

 you talk so to your richer neighbours, when you go to their 

 dinner-parties and get indigestible green peas and young 

 potatoes in early spring, which are mostly imported from 

 the south of France and Algeria, and all sorts of extrava- 

 gances and expensive wines, which are produced for show 

 and not for hospitality, and the money spent on which 

 might go to the poor ? You have no idea how readily these 

 Green Lion men would rally round you if you would give 

 them the chance, and showed them a little sympathy. 



*' They don't feel unkindly towards you, as you think ; it 



