present being
held in the night-school had begun in his time; but supposing that he
also learnt joinery, he might, now that he is a man, add thoughts of
mortices and tenons and mitre-joints to his other thoughts about wall
areas and germinating seeds. Of course, all these things--like Jewish
history or English geography--are worth knowing; but again it is true,
of these things no less than of the childish learning acquired at the
day-school, that whatever their worth may be to the people concerned to
know them, they were very unlikely to set up in this young man's brain
any constructive idea-activity, any refreshing form of thought that
would enrich his leisure now, or give zest to his conversation. They
were odds and ends of knowledge; more comparable to the numberless odds
and ends in which peasants were so rich than to the flowing and luminous
idea-life of modern civilization.

Adequate help having thus failed to reach the man from any source at any
time of his life, it cannot be surprising if now the evening's
opportunity finds him unprepared. He is between two civilizations, one
of which has lapsed, while the other has not yet come his way. And what
is true of him is true of the younger labouring men in general. In
bread-and-cheese matters they are perhaps as well off as their
forefathers in the village, but they are at a disadvantage in the matter
of varied and successful vitality. The wage-earning thrift which has
increased their usefulness as drudges has diminished their effectiveness
as human beings; for it has failed to introduce into their homes those
enlivening, those spirit-stirring influences which it denies to them
when they are away from home doing their work. Hence a strange thing.
The unemployed hours of the evening, which should be such a boon, are a
time of blank and disconsolate tediousness, and when the longer days of
the year come round many a man in the valley who ought to be glad of his
spare time dodges the wearisome problem of what to do with it by putting
himself to further work, until he can go to bed without feeling that he
has been wasting his life. Yet that is really no solution of the
problem. It means that the men are trying to be peasants again, because
they can discover no art of living, no civilization, compatible with the
new thrift.

Of course it is true that they are handicapped by the lowness of the
wages they receive. However much time one may have, it would be all but
impossi