e driver asked me
if people could go to America by land. 'Of course not,' was my reply.
'Why do you ask such a question?' Well, it came out that he had 'heerd
tell how people got to Americay in ten days; and he did not see how they
could do that unless they went by land, and had good hosses to get 'em
there at that time.' On my explaining the real state of affairs, he
admitted, by way of apology, that he was not much of a traveller himself.
Once he had been to Colchester; but that was a long time ago.

But to return to the _Suffolk Chronicle_. It was my duty as a lad, when
it had been duly studied at home, to take it to the next subscriber, and
I fancy by the time the paper had gone its round it was not a little the
worse for wear. But there were other political impulses which tended to
create and feed the sacred flame of civil and religious liberty. In one
corner of the village lived a small shopkeeper, who stored away, among
his pots and pans of treacle and sugar and grocery, a few well-thumbed
copies, done up in dirty brown paper, of the squibs and caricatures
published by Hone, whom I can just remember, a red-faced old gentleman in
black, in the _Patriot_ office, and George Cruikshank, with whom I was to
spend many a merry hour in after-life. This small shopkeeper was one of
the chapel people--a kind of superintendent in the Sunday-school, for
which office he was by no means fitted, but there was no one else to take
the berth, and as the family also dealt with him in many ways, I had
often to repair to his shop. It was then our young eyes were opened as
to the wickedness in high places by the perusal of the 'Political House
that Jack built,' and other publications of a similar revolutionary
character. Nothing is sacred to the caricaturist, and half a century ago
bishops and statesmen and lords and kings were very fair subjects for the
exercise of his art. In our day things have changed for the better,
partly as the result of the Radical efforts, of which respectability at
that time stood so much in awe. London newspapers rarely reached so far
as Wrentham. It was the fashion then to look to Ipswich for light and
leading. However, as the cry for reform increased in strength, and the
debates inside the House of Commons and out waxed fiercer, now and then
even a London newspaper found its way into our house, and I can well
remember how our hearts glowed within us as some one of us read, while
father smoked h