onder
is it if the natural result takes place? The fairs have been credited
with much of the mischief, and undoubtedly they are productive of evil;
but if they were abolished, the average would in all probability remain
about the same. The evil is inherent, and does not depend upon
circumstances. It is the outcome of a long series of generations; it
cannot be overcome in a decade. Education will do much, but not all.
Youth is always led by the tone of the elder people. Until the tone of
the parent is improved, the conduct of the young will remain much the
same. The more distant a parish from a town, the more outlying and
strictly agricultural, and therefore stagnant, the greater the
immorality. It is the one blot upon the character of the agricultural
poor. They are not thieves, they are not drunkards; if they do drink
they are harmless, and it evaporates in shouting and slang. They are not
riotous; but the immorality cannot be gainsaid. No specific cure for
this state of things can be devised: it must slowly work itself out
under the gradual pressure of an advancing social state. It will be
slow; for, up to the present, the woman has had but a small share of the
benefit that has befallen the labourer through higher wages. If higher
wages mainly go for drink, the wife at home is not much the better. The
women say themselves they are no better off.

If the girl at eighteen or twenty--in most agricultural marriages the
girls are very young--is fortunate enough to have placed her faith in a
man who redeems his word, then comes the difficulty of the cottage and
the furniture to fill it. Cottages are often difficult to find,
especially anywhere near a man's work, which is the great object. The
furniture required is not much, but there must be some. The labourer
does not deal much with the town furniture-dealer. A great deal of the
furniture in cottages has been picked up at the sales of farmers on
quitting their tenancies. Such are the old chairs, the formal sideboards
and eight-day clocks standing in tall, square oaken cases by the
staircase in the cottage. Such, too, are the great wooden bedsteads of
oak or maple upstairs; and from the same source come the really good
feather-beds and blankets. The women--especially the elder women--go to
great trouble, and pinch themselves, to find a way of purchasing a good
bed, and set no small pride upon it. These old oaken bedsteads, and
sideboards, and chairs have perhaps been in the