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greater abominations cannot be found. What village feasts have come to, I fear, in many cases, may be read in the pages of Yeast (though I never saw one so badthank God!). Do you want to know why? It is because, as I said before, gentlefolk and farmers have left off joining or taking an interest in them. They dont either subscribe to the prizes, or go down and enjoy the fun. Is this a good or a bad sign? I hardly know. Bad, sure enough, if it only arises from the further separation of classes consequent on twenty years of buying cheap and selling dear, and its accompanying over- work; or because our sons and daughters have their hearts in London Club-life, or so-called Society, instead of in the old English home-duties; because farmers sons are apeing fine gentlemen, and farmers daughters caring more to make bad foreign music than good English cheeses. Good, perhaps, if it be that the time for the old veast has gone by, that it is no longer the healthy, sound expression of English country holiday-making; that, in fact, we as a nation have got beyond it, and are in a transition state, feeling for and soon likely to find some better substitute. Only I have just got this to say before I quit the text. Dont let reformers of any sort think that they are going really to lay hold of the working boys and young men of England by any educational grapnel whatever, which hasnt some bonâ fide equivalent for the games of the old country veast in it; something to put in the place of the back-swording and wrestling and racing; something to try the muscles of mens bodies, and the endurance of their hearts, to make them rejoice in their strength. In all the new-fangled comprehensive plans which I see, this is all left out: and the consequence is, that your great Mechanics Institutes end in intellectual priggism, and your Christian Young Mens Societies in religious Pharisaism. Well, well, we must bide our time. Life isnt all beer and skittles,but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishmans education. If I could only drive this into the heads of you rising Parliamentary Lords, and young swells who have your ways made for you, as the saying is,you, who frequent palaver houses and West-end Clubs, waiting always ready to strap yourselves on to the back of poor dear old John, as soon as the present used-up lot (your fathers and uncles), who sit there on the great Parliamentary-majorities pack-saddle, and make believe theyre guiding him with their red-tape bridle, tumble, or have to be lifted off! I dont think much of you yetI wish I could; though you do go talking and lecturing up and down the country to crowded audiences, and are busy with all sorts of philanthropic intellectualism, and circulating libraries and museums, and Heaven only knows what besides, and try to make us think, through newspaper reports, that you are, even as we, of the working classes. But bless your hearts, we aint so green, though lots of us of all sorts toady you enough certainly, and try to make you think so. Ill tell you what to do now: instead of all this trumpeting and fuss, which is only the old Parliamentary- majority dodge over againjust you go, each of you (youve plenty of time for it, if youll only give up tother line), and quietly make three or four friends, real friends, among us. Youll find a little trouble in getting at the right sort, because such birds dont come lightly to your lurebut found they may be. Take, say, two out of the professions, lawyer, parson, doctorwhich you will; one out of trade, and three or four out of the working classes, tailors, engineers, carpenters, engravers,theres plenty of choice. Let them be men of your own ages, mind, and ask them to your homes; introduce them to your wives and sisters, and get introduced to theirs: give them good dinners, and talk to them about what is really at the bottom of your hearts, and box, and run, and row with them, when you have a chance. Do all this honestly as man to man, and by the time you come to ride old John, youll be able to do something more than sit on his back, and may feel his mouth with some stronger bridle than a red-tape one. Ah, if you only would! But you have got too far out of the right rut, I fear. Too much over-civilization, and the deceitfulness of riches. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Mores the pity. I never came across but two of you who could value a man wholly and solely for what was in him; who thought themselves verily and indeed of the same flesh and blood as John Jones the attorneys clerk, and Bill Smith the coster-monger, and could act as if they thought so. |
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