cles much more easily and
cheaply than they had ever done before, to make up roads and move things
about that had formerly been esteemed too heavy for locomotion, to join
woodwork with iron nails instead of wooden pegs, to achieve all sorts
of mechanical possibilities, to trade more freely and manufacture on a
larger scale, to send goods abroad in a wholesale and systematic way,
to bring back commodities from overseas, not simply spices and fine
commodities, but goods in bulk. The new influence spread to agriculture,
iron appliances replaced wooden, breeding of stock became systematic,
paper-making and printing increased and cheapened. Roofs of slate and
tile appeared amidst and presently prevailed over the original Bromstead
thatch, the huge space of Common to the south was extensively enclosed,
and what had been an ill-defined horse-track to Dover, only passable
by adventurous coaches in dry weather, became the Dover Road, and was
presently the route first of one and then of several daily coaches.
The High Street was discovered to be too tortuous for these awakening
energies, and a new road cut off its worst contortions. Residential
villas appeared occupied by retired tradesmen and widows, who esteemed
the place healthy, and by others of a strange new unoccupied class of
people who had money invested in joint-stock enterprises. First one
and then several boys' boarding-schools came, drawing their pupils from
London,--my grandfather's was one of these. London, twelve miles to the
north-west, was making itself felt more and more.

But this was only the beginning of the growth period, the first trickle
of the coming flood of mechanical power. Away in the north they were
casting iron in bigger and bigger forms, working their way to the
production of steel on a large scale, applying power in factories.
Bromstead had almost doubted in size again long before the railway came;
there was hardly any thatch left in the High Street, but instead were
houses with handsome brass-knockered front doors and several windows,
and shops with shop-fronts all of square glass panes, and the place was
lighted publicly now by oil lamps--previously only one flickering lamp
outside each of the coaching inns had broken the nocturnal darkness.
And there was talk, it long remained talk,--of gas. The gasworks came in
1834, and about that date my father's three houses must have been built
convenient for the London Road. They mark nearly the beginning