A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 221 



Jenny read in the newspaper, had landed at Gravesend. 

 I don't know what West African port the old ears had 

 translated so, but it was all perfectly immaterial to 

 her. There is loss as well as gain in excursions and 

 market tickets, and the complete educational system 

 of the Brighton Front for nineteen-pence. 



In the train I found myself in company with Mr. 

 Biles, insurance agent and dealer in sewing-machines, 

 a political, social, and (to use the copious affixes 

 affected by his race) educationalist leader in Arning- 

 ton. Arnington opinion, in the stratum which Mr. 

 Biles touches, is not sufficiently in earnest about any- 

 thing to be led at all coherently just yet ; and Mr. 

 Biles' demagogy, conducted chiefly by means of 

 contributions of the adjectival Baboo kind to the 

 local press, is not, I understand, considered dangerous 

 by the most Conservative stockbrokers in the neigh- 

 bourhood. The nucleus of vital Radicalism in our 

 village lies with a half-dozen of working-men, fair 

 workmen, soberer than the common, irreligious, good ' 

 family-men, who do a little reading, are civil, and (let 

 me as an ingrained Tory say it) very superior to the 

 ordinary labourer of the place. They are actively 

 ignorant, bitterly prejudiced, stupendously incapable 

 of clear views or any approach to argument ; but 

 their opinions are a live force working against the 



