The Revolution in Tanner's Lane Part 17

As for Zoar, it was a place apart. Its minister was a big, large- jawed, heavy-eyed man, who lived in a little cottage hard by. His wife was a very plain-looking person, who wore even on Sundays a cotton gown without any ornament, and who took her husband's arm as they walked down the lane to the chapel. The Independent minister, the Wesleyan minister, and, of course, the rector had nothing to do with the minister of Zoar. This was not because of any heresy or difference of doctrine, but because he was a poor man and poor persons sat under him. Nevertheless he was not in any way a characteristic Calvinist. The Calvinistic creed was stuck in him as in a lump of fat, and had no organising influence upon him whatever.

He had no weight in Cowfold, took part in none of its affairs, and his ministrations were confined to about fifty sullen, half stupid, wholly ignorant people who found in the Zoar services something sleepier and requiring less mental exertion than they needed elsewhere; although it must be said that the demands made upon the intellect in none of the places of wors.h.i.+p were very extensive.

There was a small endowment attached to Zoar, and on this, with the garden and house rent free, the minister lived. Once now and then-- perhaps once in every three or four years--there was a baptism in Zoar, and at such times it was crowded. The children of the congregation, as a rule fell away from it as they grew up; but occasionally a girl remained faithful and was formally admitted to its communion. In front of the pulpit was an open s.p.a.ce usually covered; but the boards could be taken up, and then a large kind of tank was disclosed, which was filled with water when the ceremony was performed. After hymns had been sung the minister went down into the water, and the candidate appeared dressed in a long white robe very much like a night-gown. The dear sister, during a short address, stood on the brink of the tank for a few moments, and then descended into it beside the minister, who, taking her by the neck and round the waist, ducked her fairly and completely. She emerged, and walked dripping into the vestry, where it was always said that hot brandy and water was ready.

Many of us have felt that we would give all our books if we could but see with our own eyes how a single day was pa.s.sed by a single ancient Jewish, Greek, or Roman family; how the house was opened in the morning; how the meals were prepared; what was said; how the husband, wife, and children went about their work; what clothes they wore, and what were their amus.e.m.e.nts. Would that the present historian could do as much for Cowfold! Would that he could bring back one blue summer morning, one afternoon and evening, and reproduce exactly what happened in Cowfold Square, in one of the Cowfold shops, in one of the Cowfold parlours, and in one Cowfold brain and heart. Could this be done with strictest accuracy, a book would be written, although Cowfold was not Athens, Rome, nor Jerusalem, which would live for many many years longer than much of the literature of this century.

But alas! the preliminary image in the mind of the writer is faint enough, and when he comes to trace it, the pencil swerves and goes off into something utterly unlike it. An attempt, however, to show what the waking hours in Cowfold Square were like may not be out of place. The shopkeeper came into his shop at half-past seven, about half an hour after the shutters had been taken down by his apprentice. At eight o'clock breakfast was ready; but before breakfast there was family wors.h.i.+p, and a chapter was read from the Bible, followed by an extempore prayer from the head of the household. If the master happened to be absent, it was not considered proper that the mistress should pray extempore, and she used a book of "Family Devotions." A very solid breakfast followed, and business began. It was very slow, but it was very human--much more so than business at the present day in the City. Every customer had something to say beyond his own immediate errand, and the shop was the place where everything touching Cowfold interests was abundantly discussed. Cowfold too, did much trade in the country round it. Most of the inhabitants kept a gig, and two or three times, perhaps, in a week a journey somewhere or other was necessary which was not in the least like a journey in a railway train. Debts in the villages were collected by the creditor in person, who called and invited his debtors to a most substantial dinner at the inn. At one o'clock Cowfold dined. Between one and two n.o.body was to be seen in the streets, and the doors were either fastened or a bell was put upon them. After dinner the same duties returned in the shop; but inside the house dinner was the turning-point of the day. When the "things were washed, up," servant and mistress began to smarten themselves, and disappearing into their bedrooms, emerged at four, to make preparations for tea, the meal most enjoyed in all Cowfold. If any spark of wit slept in any Cowfoldian male or female, it appeared then. No invitations to dinner were ever heard of; but tea was the opportunity for hospitality, especially amongst women. The minister, when he visited, invariably came to tea. The news circulated at tea, and, in fact, at tea between five and six, Cowfold, if its intellect could have been measured by a properly constructed gauge, would have been found many degrees higher in the scale than at any other hour.

Granted that the conversation was personal, trivial, and even scandalous, it was in a measure philosophical. Cowfold, though it knew nothing, or next to nothing of abstractions, took immense interest in the creatures in which they were embodied. It would have turned a deaf ear to any debate on the nature of ethical obligation; but it was very keen indeed in apportioning blame to its neighbours who had sinned, and in deciding how far they had gone wrong. Cowfold in other words believed that flesh and blood, and not ideas, are the school and the religion for most of us, and that we learn a language by the examples rather than by the rules. The young scholar fresh from his study is impatient at what he considers the unprofitable gossip about the people round the corner; but when he gets older he sees that often it is much better than his books, and that distinctions are expressed by a washerwoman, if the objects to be distinguished eat and drink and sleep, which he would find it difficult to make with his symbols. Moreover, the little Cowfold clubs and parties understood what they were saying, and so far had an advantage over the clubs and parties which, since the days of penny newspapers, now discuss in Cowfold the designs of Russia, the graduation of the Income Tax, or the merits and demerits of the administration. The Cowfold horizon has now been widened, to use the phrase of an enlightened gentleman who came down and lectured there on the criminality of the advertis.e.m.e.nt duty; but unfortunately the eyes remain the same. Cowfold now looks abroad, and is very eloquent upon the fog in the distance, and the objects it thinks it sees therein; but, alas! what it has gained in inclusive breadth it has lost in definition. Politics, however, were not unknown in Cowfold; for before 1832 it was a borough, and after 1832 it was one of the princ.i.p.al polling-places for the county. Nevertheless it was only on the eve of an election that anybody dabbled in them, and even then they were very rudimentary. The science to most of the voters meant nothing more than a preference of blue to yellow, or yellow to blue; and women had nothing whatever to do with it, excepting that wives always, of course, took their husbands' colours. Politics, too, as a rule, were not mentioned in private houses. They were mostly reserved for the "Angel," and for the brandies and water and pipes which collected there in the evening.

To return. After tea the master went back once more to his counter, and the shutters were put up at eight. From eight to nine was an hour of which no account can be given: The lights were left burning in the shops, and the neighbour across the way looked in and remained talking till his supper was ready. Supper at nine, generally hot, was an inst.i.tution never omitted, and, like tea, was convivial; but the conviviality was of a distinctly lower order. Everybody had whisky, gin, or brandy afterwards, and every male person who was of age smoked. There was, as a rule, no excess, but the remarks were apt to be disconnected and woolly; and the wife, who never had grog for herself, but always sipped her husband's went to sleep. Eleven o'clock saw all Cowfold in bed, and disturbed only by such dreams as were begotten of the previous liver and bacon and alcohol.

There were no villains amongst that portion of the inhabitants with which this history princ.i.p.ally concerns itself, nor was a single adventure of any kind ever known to happen beyond the adventures of being born, getting married, falling sick, and dying, with now and then an accident from a gig. Consequently it might be though that there was no romance in Cowfold. There could not be a greater mistake. The history of every boy or girl of ordinary make is one of robbery, murder, imprisonment, death sentence, filing of chains, scaling of prison walls, recapture, scaffold, reprieve, poison, and pistols; the difference between such a history and that in the authorised versions being merely circ.u.mstantial. The garden of Eden, the murder of Cain, the deluge, the salvation of Noah, the exodus from Egypt, David and Bathsheba, with the murder of Uriah, the a.s.syrian invasion, the Incarnation, the Atonement, and the Resurrection from the Dead; to say nothing of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the tragedy of Count Cenci, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, the Inquisition in Spain, and Revolt of the Netherlands, all happened in Cowfold, as well as elsewhere, and were perhaps more interesting there because they could be studied in detail and the records were authentic.

Church Street, Cowfold--that is to say, the street in which the church stood--was tolerably broad going east and west, so that the sun shone full on the white window-frames and red brick of Mr.

Muston's house, in which everything seemed to sleep in eternal calm.

On the opposite side was the seminary, also red brick and white paint, facing the north; but, to make amends, the garden had a southern aspect, and the back of the house was covered with a huge magnolia whose edges curled round to the western side, so that it could be seen by wayfarers. It was a sight not to be forgotten--the red brick, the white paint, the July sun the magnolia leaves, the flanking elms on the east high above the chimneys, the glimpse of the acre of lawn through the great gates when they happened to be open, the peace, so profound, of summer noon! How lovely it looks as it hovers unsteadily before the eye, seen through the transfiguring haze of so many years! It was really, there is no doubt about it, handsomer than the stuccoed villa which stares at us over the way; but yet, if Cowfold Church Street, red brick, white paint, elms, lawn, and midsummer repose could be restored at the present moment, would it be exactly what the vision of it is? What is this magic gift which even for the humblest of us paints and frames these enchanting pictures? It is nothing less than the genius which is common to humanity. If we are not able to draw or model, we possess the power to select, group, and clothe with an ideal grace, which is the very soul of art, and every man and woman, every bush, nay, every cabbage, cup, and saucer, provided only it be not actually before us, becomes part of a divine picture. Would that we could do with the present what we do with the past! We CAN do something if we try.

At the end of Church Street came the vicarage, and then the churchyard, with the church. Beyond was the park, which half embraced Cowfold, for it was possible to enter it not only from Church Street, but from North Street, which ran at right angles to it. The Hall was not much. It was a large plain stone mansion, built in the earlier part of the eighteenth century; but in front of the main entrance was a double row of limes stretching for a quarter of a mile, and the whole of the park was broken up into soft swelling hills, from whose tops, owing to the flatness of the country round, an almost immeasurable distance could be seen, gradually losing itself in deepening mist of tenderest blue. The park, too, was not rigidly circ.u.mscribed. Public roads led through it. It melted on two or three sides into cultivated fields, and even the private garden of the Hall seemed a part of it, for there was nothing between them but a kind of gra.s.sy ditch and an almost invisible fence. The domain of Cowfold Hall was the glory of Cowfold and the pride of its inhabitants. The modern love of scenery was not known in Cowfold, and still less was that wors.h.i.+p of landscape and nature known which, as before observed, is peculiar to the generation born under the influence of Wordsworth. We have learnt, however, from Zachariah that even before Wordsworth's days people were sometimes touched by dawn or sunset. The morning cheered, the moon lent pathos and sentiment, and the stars awoke unanswerable interrogations in Cowfold, although it knew no poetry, save Dr. Watts, Pollok's Course of Time, and here and there a little of Cowper. Under the avenue, too, whose slender columns, in triple rows on either side, rose to an immense height, and met in a roof overhead with all the grace of cathedral stone, and without its superinc.u.mbent weight and imprisonment--a roof that was not impervious to the sunlight, but let it pa.s.s and fall in quivering flakes on the ground--Cowfold generally took off its hat, partly, no doubt, because the place was cool, but also as an act of homage. Here and in the woods adjoining youths and maidens for three hundred years had walked and made love, for, though the existing house was new, it stood on the site of a far older building. Dead men and women, lord and churl, gone to indistinguishable dust, or even beyond that--gone perhaps, into vapour and gas, which had been blown to New Zealand, and become men and women again--had burned with pa.s.sion here, and vowed a union which was to last beyond the Judgment Day. They wept here, quarrelled here, rushed again into one another's arms here, swore to one another here, when Henry the Eighth was king; and they wept here, quarrelled here, embraced here, swore here, in exactly the same mad fas.h.i.+on, when William the Fourth sat upon the throne. Half-way up the avenue was a stone pillar commanding a gentle descent, one way to the Hall, and the other way to the lodge. It set forth the anguish of a former lord of the time of Queen Anne, who had lost his wife when she was twenty-six years old. She was beneath him in rank, but very beautiful, and his affection for her had fought with and triumphed over the cruel opposition of father, mother, and relations, who had other designs. He had made enemies of them all; but he won his wife, and, casting her in the scale, father, mother, and friends were as gossamer. She died two years after the wedding--to the very day. Rich in her love, he had never taken a thought to propitiate anybody, nor to make friends with the Mammon of Unrighteousness, and when she suddenly departed, he turned round and found himself alone.

So far from knocking at men's doors, he more fiercely hated those who now, touched with pity, would gladly have welcomed him. He broke from them all, lived his own life, was reputed to be a freethinker, and when he came to his estate, a long while afterwards, he put up the obelisk, and recorded in Latin how Death, the foul adulterer, had ravished his sweet bride--the coward Death whom no man could challenge--and that the inconsolable bridegroom had erected this monument in memory of her matchless virtues. That was all: no blessed resurrection nor trust in the Saviour. The Reverend John Broad, minister of Tanner's Lane Chapel, when he brought visitors here regularly translated the epitaph. He was not very good at Latin, but he had somehow found out its meaning. He always observed that it was not cla.s.sic, and consequently not easy to render. He pointed out, too, as a further curiosity, which somewhat increased the difficulty to any ordinary person, that V was used for U, and I for J. He never, as might be expected, omitted to enlarge upon the omission of any reference to the Atoning Blood and the Life to Come, and remarked how the poor man's sufferings would have been entirely "a.s.suaged"--a favourite word with Mr. Broad--if he had believed in those "remedies." At the same time Mr. Broad dwelt upon the "a.s.sociations" of the avenue, which, he thought, added much to its natural "attractiveness." Cowfold thought so too, and welcomed the words as exactly expressing what it felt. John Broad and Cowfold were right, and more right, perhaps, than they knew. The draper's young man, who walked through the park with his arm round his young woman's waist, looked up at the obelisk, repeated its story, and became more serious. Thus it came to pa.s.s that the old lord's love lived again somewhat in the apprentice, and that which to the apprentice seemed most particularly himself was a little bit of the self of the Queen Anne's earl long since asleep in the vault under Cowfold Church.

CHAPTER XVII--WHEN WILT THOU ARISE OUT OF THY SLEEP? YET A LITTLE SLEEP

The Reverend John Broad was minister of Tanner's Lane Chapel, or, more properly, Meeting-house, a three gabled building, with the date 1688 upon it, which stood in a short street leading out of North Street. Why it was called Tanner's Lane n.o.body knew; for not in the memory of man had any tanner carried on his trade there. There was nothing of any consequence in it but the meeting-house, and when people said Tanner's Lane this was what they meant. There were about seven hundred and fifty sittings in it, and on Sundays it was tolerably full, for it was attended by large numbers of people from the surrounding villages, who came in gigs and carts, and brought their dinners with them, which they ate in the vestry. It was, in fact, the centre of the Dissenting activity for a whole district. It had small affiliated meeting-houses in places like Sheepgate, Hackston Green, and Bull's Cross, in which service was held on Sunday evening by the deacons of Tanner's Lane, or by some of the young men whom Mr. Broad prepared to be missionaries. For a great many years the congregation had apparently undergone no change in character; but the uniformity was only apparent. The fervid piety of Cowper's time and of the Evangelical revival was a thing almost of the past. The Reverend John Broad was certainly not of the Revival type. He was a big, gross-feeding, heavy person, with heavy ox-face and large mouth, who might have been bad enough for anything if nature had ordained that he should have been born in a hovel at Sheepgate or in the Black Country. As it happened, his father was a woollen draper, and John was brought up to the trade as a youth; got tired of it, thought he might do something more respectable; went to a Dissenting College; took charge of a little chapel in Buckinghams.h.i.+re; married early; was removed to Tanner's Lane, and became a preacher of the Gospel. He was moderate in all of what he called his "views;" neither ultra- Calvinist nor Arminian not rigid upon Baptism, and certainly much unlike his lean and fervid predecessor, the Reverend James Harden, M.A., who was educated at Cambridge; threw up all his chances there when he became convinced of sin; cast in his lot with the Independents, and wrestled even unto blood with the world, the flesh, and the devil in Cowfold for thirty years, till he was gathered to his rest. A fiery, ardent, untamable soul was Harden's, bold and uncompromising. He never scrupled to tell anybody what he thought, and would send an arrow sharp and swift through any iniquity, no matter where it might couch. He absolutely ruled Cowfold, hated by many, beloved by many, feared by all--a genuine soldier of the Cross.

Mr. Broad very much preferred the indirect mode of doing good, and if he thought a brother had done wrong, contented himself with praying in private for him. He was, however, not a hypocrite, that is to say, not an ordinary novel or stage hypocrite. There is no such thing as a human being simply hypocritical or simply sincere. We are all hypocrites, more or less, in every word and every action, and, what is more, in every thought. It is a question simply of degree.

Furthermore, there are degrees of natural capacity for sincerity, and Mr. Broad was probably as sincere as his build of soul and body allowed him to be. Certainly no doubt as to the truth of what he preached ever crossed his mind. He could not doubt, for there was no doubt in the air; and yet he could not believe as Harden believed, for neither was Harden's belief now in the air. Nor was Mr. Broad a criminal in any sense. He was upright, on the whole, in all his transactions, although a little greedy and hard, people thought, when the trustees proposed to remit to Widow Oakfield, on her husband's death, half the rent of a small field belonging to the meeting-house, and contributing a modest sum to Mr. Broad's revenue. He objected.

Widow Oakfield was poor; but then she did not belong to Tanner's Lane, and was said to have relations who could help her. Mr. Broad loved his wife decently, brought up his children decently, and not the slightest breath of scandal ever tarnished his well-polished reputation. On some points he was most particular, and no young woman who came to him with her experience before she was admitted into the church was ever seen by him alone. Always was a deacon present, and all Cowfold admitted that the minister was most discreet. Another recommendation, too, was that he was temperate in his drink. He was not so in his meat. Supper was his great meal, and he would then consume beef, ham, or sausages, hot potatoes, mixed pickles, fruit pies, bread, cheese, and celery in quant.i.ties which were remarkable even in those days; but he never drank anything but beer--a pint at dinner and a pint at supper.

On one Monday afternoon in July, 1840, Mr. and Mrs. Broad sat at tea in the study. This was Mr. Broad's habit on Monday afternoon. On that day, after the three sermons on the Sunday, he always professed himself "Mondayish." The morning was given over to calling in the town; when he had dined he slept in his large leathern chair; and at five husband and wife had tea by themselves. Thomas, the eldest son, and his two younger sisters, Priscilla and Tryphosa, aged seventeen and fifteen, were sent to the dining-room. Mr. Broad never omitted this custom of spending an hour and a half on Monday with Mrs. Broad.

It gave them an opportunity of talking over the affairs of the congregation, and it added to Mr. Broad's importance with the missionary students, because they saw how great were the weight and fatigue of the pastoral office.

A flock like that which was shepherded by Mr. Broad required some management. Mrs. Broad took the women, and Mr. Broad the men; but Mrs. Broad was not a very able tactician. She was a Flavel by birth, and came from a distant part of the country. Her father was a Dissenting minister; but he was Dr. Flavel, with a great chapel in a great town. Consequently she gave herself airs, and occasionally let fall, to the great displeasure of the Cowfold ladies, words which implied some disparagement of Cowfold. She was a shortish, stout, upright little woman, who used a large fan and spoke with an accent strange to the Midlands. She was not a great help to the minister, because she was not sufficiently flexible and insinuating for her position; but nevertheless they always worked together, and she followed as well as she could the directions of her astuter husband, who, considering his bovine cast, was endowed with quite a preternatural sagacity in the secular business of his profession.

On this particular afternoon, however, the subject of the conversation was not the congregation, but young Thomas Broad, aged eighteen, the exact, and almost ridiculously exact, counterpart of his father. He had never been allowed to go to school, but had been taught at home. There was only one day-school in Cowfold, and his mother objected to the "mixture." She had been heard to say as much, and Cowfold resented this too, and the Cowfold youths resented it by holding Tommy Broad in extreme contempt. He had never been properly a boy, for he could play at no boyish games; had a tallowy, unpleasant complexion, went for formal walks, and carried gloves.

But though in a sense incompletely developed, he was not incompletely developed in another direction. He was at what is called an awkward age, and both father and mother had detected in him an alarming tendency to enjoy the society of young women--a tendency much stimulated by his unnatural mode of life. Thomas was already a member of the church and was a teacher in the Sunday-school; but his mother was uneasy, for a serious attachment between Thomas and anybody in the town would have been very distasteful to her. The tea having been poured out, and Mr. Broad having fairly settled down upon the b.u.t.tered toast and radishes, Mrs. Broad began:

"Have you thought anything more about Thomas, my dear?"

Being a minister's son, he was never called Tom by either papa or mamma.

"Yes, my love; but it is very difficult to know how to proceed judiciously in such a case."

"Mrs. Allen asked me, last Wednesday, when he was going to leave home, and I told her we had not made up our minds. She said that her brother in Birmingham wanted a youth in his office, but my answer was directly that we had quite determined that Thomas should not enter into any trade."

"What did she say?"

"That she was not surprised, for she hardly thought Thomas was fitted for it."

The minister looked grave and perplexed, for Mr. Allen was in trade, and was a deacon. Mrs. Broad proceeded:

"I am quite sure Thomas ought to be a minister; and I am quite sure, too, he ought to leave Cowfold and go to college."

"Don't you think this event might be procrastinated; the expense would be considerable."

"Well, my dear, f.a.n.n.y Allen came here to tea the day before yesterday. When she went away she could not find her clogs. I was on the landing, and saw what happened, though they did not think it.

f.a.n.n.y's brother was waiting outside. Priscilla had gone somewhere far the moment--I don't know where--and Tryphosa was upstairs.

Thomas said he would look for the clogs, and presently I saw him fastening them for her. Then he walked with her down the garden. I just went into the front bedroom and looked. It was not very dark, and,--well, I may be mistaken, but I do believe--" The rest of the sentence was wanting. Mrs. Broad stopped at this point. She felt it was more becoming to do so. She s.h.i.+fted on her chair with a fidgety motion, threw her head back a little, looked up at the portrait of Dr. Flavel in gown and bands which hung over the fireplace, straightened her gown upon her knees, and pushed it forward over her feet so as to cover them altogether--a mute protest against the impropriety of the scene she had partly described. Mr. Broad inwardly would have liked her to go on; but he always wore his white neckerchief, except when he was in bed, and he was still the Reverend John Broad, although n.o.body but his wife was with him. He therefore refrained, but after a while slowly observed:

"Thomas has not made much progress in systematic theology."

"They do not require much on admission, do they? He knows the outlines, and I am sure the committee will recollect my father and be glad to get Thomas. I have heard that the social position of the candidates is not what it used to be, and that they wish to obtain some of a superior stamp, who ultimately may be found adapted to metropolitan churches."

"One of the questions last year, my dear, was upon the office of the Comforter, and you remember Josiah Collins was remanded. I hardly think Thomas is sufficiently instructed on that subject at present; and there are others. On the whole, it is preferable that he should not go till September twelvemonths."

"His personal piety would have weight."

"Undoubtedly."

There was a pause, and Mrs. Broad then continued:

"Well, my dear, you know best; but what about f.a.n.n.y? I shall not ask her again. How very forward, and indeed altogether"--Another stoppage, another twitch at her gown, with another fidget on the chair, the eyes going up to Dr. Flavel's bands as before. "In OUR house too--to put herself in Thomas's way!"

Ah! Mrs. Broad, are you sure Thomas did not go out of his way--even in your house, that eminently respectable, eminently orthodox residence--even Thomas, your Samuel, who had been granted to the Lord, and who, to use his own words when his written religious autobiography was read at the church-meeting, being the child of pious parents, and of many prayers, had never been exposed to those a.s.saults of the enemy of souls which beset ordinary young men, and consequently had not undergone a sudden conversion?

"But," observed Mr. Broad, leaning back in his easy-chair, and half covering his face with his great broad, fat hand, "we shall offend the Allens if f.a.n.n.y does not come, and we shall injure the cause."

"Has George Allen, f.a.n.n.y's brother, prayed at the prayer-meeting yet?

He was admitted two months ago."

"No."

"Then ask his father to let him pray; and we need not invite f.a.n.n.y till Thomas has left."

The papa objected that perhaps Thomas might go to the Allen's, but the mamma, with Dr. Flavel's bands before her, a.s.sured him that Thomas would do nothing of the kind. So it was settled that Mr.

Broad should call at the Allen's to-morrow, and suggest that George should "engage" on the following Thursday. This, it was confidently hoped, would prevent any suspicion on their part that f.a.n.n.y had been put aside. Of course, once having begun, George would be regularly on the list.

CHAPTER XVIII--A RELIGIOUS PICNIC

Occasionally, in the summer months, Tanner's Lane indulged in a picnic; that is to say, the princ.i.p.al members of the congregation, with their wives and children, had an early dinner, and went in gigs and four-wheel chaises to Shott Woods, taking hampers of bread, cake, jam, b.u.t.ter, ham, and other eatables with them. At Shott Woods, in a small green s.p.a.ce under an immense oak, a fire was lighted and tea was prepared. Mr. Broad and his family always joined the party.

These were the days when Dissenters had no set amus.e.m.e.nts, and the entertainment at Shott mainly consisted in getting the sticks for the fire, fetching the water, and waiting on one another; the waiting being particularly pleasant to the younger people. Dancing, of course, was not thought of. In 1840 it may safely be said that there were not twenty Independent families in Great Britain in which it would have been tolerated, and, moreover, none but the rich learned to dance.

No dancing-master ever came into Cowfold; there was no music-master there; no concert was ever given; and Cowfold, in fact, never "saw nor heard anything;" to use a modern phrase, save a travelling menagerie with a bra.s.s band. What an existence! How DID they live?

It's certain, however, that they did live, and, on the whole, enjoyed their life.