rk) 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 fora 
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 
