r, because 'a wedding at home means five and
six handed reels by the hour, and they do a man's legs no good when
he's over forty.' A second corroborates the remark and says: 'True.
Once at the woman's house you can hardly say nay to being one in a
jig, knowing all the time that you be expected to make yourself worth
your victuals.'

The third puts the whole matter beyond the need of further discussion
by adding: 'For my part, I like a good hearty funeral as well as
anything. You've as splendid victuals and drink as at other parties,
and even better. And it don't wear your legs to stumps in talking over
a poor fellow's ways as it do to stand up in hornpipes.'

Beings who talk like this know their minds,--a rather unwonted
circumstance among the sons of men,--and knowing them, they do the
next most natural thing in the world, which is to speak the minds they
have.

There is yet another phase of Hardy's humor to be noted: that humor,
sometimes defiant, sometimes philosophic, which concerns death and its
accompaniments. It cannot be thought morbid. Hardy is too fond of
Nature ever to degenerate into mere morbidity. He has lived much in
the open air, which always corrects a tendency to 'vapors.' He takes
little pleasure in the gruesome, a statement in support of which one
may cite all his works up to 1892, the date of the appearance of
_Tess_. This paper includes no comment in detail upon the later books;
but so far as _Tess_ is concerned it would be critical folly to speak
of it as morbid. It is sad, it is terrible, as _Lear_ is terrible, or
as any one of the great tragedies, written by men we call 'masters,'
is terrible. _Jude_ is psychologically gruesome, no doubt; but not
absolutely indefensible. Even if it were as black a book as some
critics have painted it, the general truth of the statement as to the
healthfulness of Hardy's work would not be impaired. This work judged
as a whole is sound and invigorating. He cannot be accused of
over-fondness for charnel-houses or ghosts. He does not discourse of
graves and vaults in order to arouse that terror which the thought of
death inspires. It is not for the purpose of making the reader
uncomfortable. If the grave interests him, it is because of the
reflections awakened. 'Man, proud man,' needs that jog to his memory
which the pomp of interments and aspect of tombstones give. Hardy has
keen perception of that humor which glows in the presence of death and
on the edge of t