Goloshes had not then come into use, and women wore
in muddy weather pattens or clogs. The simple necessaries of life were
very dear, and tea and coffee and sugar were sold at what would now be
deemed an exorbitant price. Postage was prohibitory, and when any one
went to town he was laden with letters. As little light as possible was
admitted into the house in order to save the window-tax. The farmer was
generally arrayed in a blue coat and yellow brass buttons. The gentleman
had a frilled shirt and wore Hessian boots. I never saw a magazine of
the fashions; nowadays they are to be met with everywhere. Yet we were
never dull, and in the circle in which I moved we never heard of the need
of change. People were content to live and die in the village without
going half-a-dozen miles away, with the exception of the farmers, who
might drive to the nearest market town, transact their business, dine at
the ordinary, and then, after a smoke and a glass of brandy and water and
a chat with their fellow-farmers, return home. Of the rush and roar of
modern life, with its restlessness and eagerness for something new and
sensational, we had not the remotest idea.

CHAPTER V.
OUT ON THE WORLD.

In the good old city of Norwich. I passed a year as an apprentice, in
what was then known as London Lane. It was a time of real growth to me
mentally. I had a bedroom to myself; in reality it was a closet. I had
access to a cheap library, where I was enabled to take my fill, and did a
good deal of miscellaneous study. I would have joined the Mechanics'
Institute, where they had debates, but the people with whom I lived were
orthodox Dissenters, and were rather afraid of my embracing Unitarian
principles. The fear was, I think, groundless. At any rate, one of the
most distinguished debaters was Mr. Jacob Henry Tillett, afterwards M.P.,
then in a lawyer's office; and another was his friend Joseph Pigg, who
became a Congregational minister, but did not live to old age. Another
of the lot--who was a great friend of Pigg's--was Bolingbroke Woodward,
who was, I think, in a bank, from which he went to Highbury, thence as a
Congregational minister to Wortwell, near Harleston, and died librarian
to the Queen. Evidently there was no necessary connection, as the people
where I lived thought, between debating and embracing Unitarian
principles.

Norwich seemed to me a wonderful city. I had already visited the place
at the tim