t of good humour. Moreover, I found out
who was the most unpopular man in the room, and earned much goodwill by
slyly administering the kind of strokes which a fairly educated man can
always play off on a dullard. I hate the parlour, and if I were to let
out according to my fancy I should use violent language. In that dull,
stupid place one learns to appraise the talk about sociality and
joviality at its correct value. I am afraid I must utter a heresy. I
have heard that George Eliot's chapter about the Raveloe Inn is
considered as equal to Shakespeare's work. Now I can only see in it the
imaginative writing of a clever woman who tried to dramatise a scene
without having any data to guide her. In all my life I never heard a
conversation resembling that of the farrier and the rest in the remotest
degree. In the first place, one element of public-house talk--the overt
or sly indecency--is left out. In an actual public-house parlour the man
who can bring in a totally new tale of a dirty nature is the hero of the
evening. Then the element of scandal is missing. When men of vulgar mind
meet together, you only need to wait a few minutes before you hear
someone's character pulled to pieces, and the scandal is usually of the
clumsiest sort. Again, it is easy to represent the landlord as a pliable
person who agrees with everybody; but the landlord of real life is a
person who is treated with deference, and who asserts his position in
the most pronounced fashion. If he has a good customer he is courteous
and obliging, but he keeps a strict hand on his company, and lets them
know who is master. Nearly all the landlords I have known since I became
a Loafer have been good fellows. They find it in their interest to be
generous, obliging, and friendly; but to represent them as timorous
sycophants is absurd. They are ordinary tradesmen; they have a good
opinion of themselves, and they hold their own with all classes of men.
The women are sometimes insolent, overdressed creatures, who heartily
despise their customers; but very often a landlord marries a lady who is
as far as possible from being like the hostess of fiction.

The temperance orators destroy their main chance of gaining a success by
their senseless attempts to be funny at the expense of the licensed
victuallers. Any spouter who chooses to rant about the landlady's gold
chain and silk dress can make sure of a laugh, and anyone who talks
about "prosperous Mr. Bung" is approved