clever author of that wonderful book _Robinson Crusoe_, for
he wrote:

Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The Devil always builds a chapel there;
And 'twill be found upon examination,
The Devil has the largest congregation.

The church services were held morning and afternoon, evening service
being then almost unknown in country places; and between the services
the churchwardens and other officials of the church often adjourned to
the inn to hear the news and to smoke tobacco in long clay pipes named
after them "churchwarden pipes"; many of the company who came from long
distances remained eating and drinking until the time came for afternoon
service, generally held at three o'clock.

The landlords of the inns were men of light and leading, and were
specially selected by the magistrates for the difficult and responsible
positions they had to fill; and as many of them had acted as stewards
or butlers--at the great houses of the neighbourhood, and perhaps had
married the cook or the housekeeper, and as each inn was required by law
to provide at least one spare bedroom, travellers could rely upon being
comfortably housed and well victualled, for each landlord brewed his own
beer and tried to vie with his rival as to which should brew the best.

Education was becoming more appreciated by the poorer people, although
few of them could even write their own names; but when their children
could do so, they thought them wonderfully clever, and educated
sufficiently to carry them through life. Many of them were taken away
from school and sent to work when only ten or eleven years of age!

Books were both scarce and dear, the family Bible being, of course, the
principal one. Scarcely a home throughout the land but possessed one of
these family heirlooms, on whose fly-leaf were recorded the births and
deaths of the family sometimes for several successive generations, as it
was no uncommon occurrence for occupiers of houses to be the descendants
of people of the same name who had lived in them for hundreds of years,
and that fact accounted for traditions being handed down from one
generation to another.

Where there was a village library, the books were chiefly of a religious
character; but books of travel and adventure, both by land and sea, were
also much in evidence, and _Robinson Crusoe, Captain Cook's Three
Voyages round the World_, and the _Adventures of Mungo Park in Africa_
were often read by young people.