74 IDLEHURST : 



sources of saving Democratic health ; this, and a good 

 deal more, is implied at open-air meetings at Election- 

 time. Even in saner hours one hears the labourers 

 credited with monopoly in several branches of virtue. 

 When the Rector says that there are only two or three 

 heads of families in all Mill Lane and Wickens' 

 Cottages who are consistently sober, I rashly take his 

 word against the Progressive estimate; and I recollect 

 how Mr. Eliab Blaber, our village carpenter, builder, 

 and undertaker, recently excused a delayed job by 

 explaining, more in sorrow than in anger, that on a 

 particular Monday morning there was not a man in 

 his yard sufficiently the better of his week-end drink 

 to go to work. What may be called moderate drunken- 

 ness is the general rule ; there are exceptions, in the 

 way of fitful abstinence and paroxysms of boozing. 

 What chance have the children in any training of 

 morals, when the school-hours go over studies which 

 are to enable us to best the crafty Germans, and the 

 home-life is enlivened by father's varying states of 

 beer ? 



And it were well if only beer were to blame. The 

 common cottage life is both dirty and unhealthy, 

 dull and ugly. The old houses in the village have 

 for the most part large rooms, if low ; they are nearly 

 all " detached," with tolerable patches of garden ; 



