Nowadays, a father will return from
London and not even mention the Tubes to his children. Why should he?
They know all about them and are surprised at nothing. The picture books
and the cinemas have familiarised them with every aspect of modern life.

In those days our pleasures and our amusements were fewer, but impressed
us more. I remember how eagerly the coloured pictures of the Christmas
numbers of the pictorial papers were looked forward to, talked of,
criticised, admired, framed and hung up. I remember too, the excitements
of Saint Valentine's Day, Shrove Tuesday, April Fool's Day, May Day and
the Morris (Molly) dancers; and the Fifth of November, Guy Fawkes Day. I
remember also the peripatetic knife grinder and his trundling machine,
the muffin man, the pedlar and his wares, the furmity wheat vendor, who
trudged along with his welcome cry of "Frummitty!" from door to door.
Those were pleasant and innocent excitements. We have other things to
engage us now, but I sometimes think all is not _gain_ that the march of
progress brings.

Young people then had fewer books to read, but read them thoroughly. What
excitement and discussion attended the monthly instalments of Dickens'
novels in _All the Year Round_; how eagerly they were looked for. Lucky
he or she who had heard the great _master_ read himself in public. His
books were read in our homes, often aloud to the family circle by
paterfamilias, and moved us to laughter or tears. I never now see our
young people, or their elders either, affected by an author as we were
then by the power of Dickens. He was a new force and his pages kindled
in our hearts a vivid feeling for the poor and their wrongs.

Scott's _Waverley Novels_, too, aroused our enthusiasm. In the early
sixties a cheap edition appeared, and cheap editions were rare things
then. It was published, if I remember aright, at two shillings per
volume; an event that stirred the country. My father brought each volume
home as it came out. I remember it well; a pale, creamy-coloured paper
cover, good type, good paper. What treasures they were, and only two
shillings! I was a little child when an important movement for the
cheapening of books began. In 1852 Charles Dickens presided at a meeting
of authors and others against the coercive regulations of the
Booksellers' Association which maintained their excessive profits.
Herbert Spencer and Miss Evans (George Eliot) took a prominent part in