84 Customs of Cottagers. 



flames in the centre of the field. Doubtless there was 

 some historic basis for the stor}' ; but the preacher 

 made it quite his own b}' the vigor and life of the 

 local coloring in which he clothed it, speaking of 

 the gi-een grass, the flowers, the innocent sheep, 

 the fagots, and so on, bringing it home to the minds 

 of his audience to whom fagots and grass and sheep 

 were so well known. They worked themselves into 

 a state of intense excitement as the narrative ap- 

 proached its climax, till a continuous moaning formed 

 a deep undertone to the speaker's voice. vSuch men 

 are not paid, trained, or organized ; thej^ labor from 

 goodwill in the cause. 



Now and then a wTjman, too, may be found who 

 lectures in the little cottage room where ten or fifteen, 

 perhaps twenty, are packed almost to suffocation ; or 

 she praj's aloud and the rest respond. Sometimes, 

 no doubt, persons of little sincerity practise these 

 things from pure vanitj' and the ambition of preach- 

 ing — for there is ambition in cottage life as else- 

 where; but the men and women I speak of are 

 thoroughh' in earnest. 



Cottagers have their own social creed and customs. 

 In their intercourse, one point which seems to be in- 

 sisted upon particularly is a previous knowledge or 

 acquaintance. The ver}- people whose morals are 

 known to be none of the strictest — and cottage 

 morality is sometimes ver}' far from severe — will 

 refuse, and especially the women, to admit a strange 

 girl, for instance, to sleep in their house for ample 

 remuneration, even when introduced bj^ really respect- 

 able persons. Servant-girls in the country where 

 railways even now are few and far between often 



