70 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



everybody knew the wretch was a drunkard and beat his 

 wife, and many knew his wife was no better than she 

 should be. Nothing was too base to be laid to the 

 charge of the scoundrel who had run away. At the end 

 of a few weeks the wretch and his family returned, 

 looking very healthy and well supplied with money, 

 having been picking in a distant hop-garden. It was 

 common for people to shut their houses and do this at 

 that season of the year, but their blind malice was too 

 eager to remember this. Another person by continually 

 dunning a poor debtor to pay him half a sovereign had 

 driven him to commit suicide ! So ran their bitter 

 tongues. Backbiting is the curse of village life, and 

 seems to keep people by its effects upon the mind far 

 more effectually in the grip of poverty than the lowness 

 of wages. They become so saturated with littleness that 

 they cannot attempt anything, and have no enterprise, 

 To transplant them to the freer atmosphere of a great 

 city, or of the Far West, is the only means of cure. At 

 this particular village they were exceptionally given to 

 backbiting, perhaps because everybody was more than 

 usually related to everybody ; they hated each other 

 and vilified each other with pre-eminent energy. The 

 poorest man, half starving, would hardly do a job for a 

 farmer because because because he did not know why, 

 except that nothing was too bad to be said of him ; the 

 poorest washerwoman with hungry children would not 

 go and do a day's work for Mrs. So-and-so, because 

 ' she beant nobody, she beant no better than we ; beant 

 a-going to work for her.' This malice was not directed 

 towards strangers, against whom it is natural to heave 

 half a brick, but against their own old neighbours. 

 They tore each other to pieces, they were perfect can- 

 nibals with the tongue, perfect Lestrigonians. They 



