e wake or festival of the patron saint, and have been
held on the same day in every year since that time.

[23] #Dragoons#: soldiers who serve on foot or on horseback,
as occasion requires.

[24] #Old gamester#: a person skilled in the game of
single-stick or back sword.

[25] #Wiltshire and Somersetshire#: counties west of
Berkshire.

[26] #Statute feasts#: festivals established by law.

There was no longer any remembrance of why the "veast" had been
instituted, but nevertheless it had a pleasant and almost sacred
character of its own. For it was then that all the children of the
village, wherever they were scattered, tried to get home for a holiday
to visit their fathers and mothers and friends, bringing with them
their wages or some little gift from up the country for the old folk.
Perhaps for a day or two before, but at any rate on "veast-day" and
the day after, in our village, you might see strapping, healthy young
men and women from all parts of the country going round from house to
house in their best clothes, and finishing up with a call on Madam
Brown, whom they would consult as to putting out their earnings to the
best advantage, or how best to expend the same for the benefit of the
old folk. Every household, however poor, managed to raise a
"feast-cake" and bottle of ginger or raisin wine, which stood on the
cottage table ready for all comers, and not unlikely to make them
remember feast-time,--for feast-cake is very solid and full of huge
raisins. Moreover feast-time was the day of reconciliation for the
parish. If Job Higgins and Noah Freeman hadn't spoken for the last six
months, their "old women" would be sure to get it patched up by that
day. And though there was a good deal of drinking and low vice in the
booths[27] of an evening, it was pretty well confined to those who
would have been doing the like "veast or no veast"; and, on the whole,
the effect was humanizing and Christian. In fact, the only reason why
this is not the case still, is that gentlefolk and farmers have taken
to other amusements, and have, as usual, forgotten the poor. They
don't attend the feasts themselves, and call them disreputable,
whereupon the steadiest of the poor leave them also, and they become
what they are called. Class amusements, be they for dukes or
plow-boys, always become nuisances and curses to a country. The true
charm of cricket[28] and hunting is, that they are still, more or less