Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/21

 and Broad, neither quality very savoury to her mind, especially the first, which she always associates with conventicle and nonconformity outbreak, radicalism, and that general upsetting of the "lower orders" of society, which, as she affirms, is now turning everything in Church and State topsy-turvy. Even the late mitigation in Court dress was not at all to her mind. In these times she would surrender nothing to the enemy.

Her temper was sadly ruffled lately in one of those modern upsetting ways. Having helped to start a servants' home in our district, she was elected on the first committee, and was no little gratified by the distinction. But she was so strict with the inmates, ever reminding them of their proper sphere, and the due recognition of their "betters," that at last a mutiny broke out all over the establishment, and was only with difficulty suppressed. And how could it have been suppressed at all, amongst such naturally perverse people, my wife maintained, but for all her disciplinary care in the first instance! And yet at the next election she was dropped out of the committee, her name being at the bottom of the poll. After that, never speak to my wife of the merits of free elective institutions!

White was an old retired coasting skipper, settled down for his life's short remnant in our part of great London, and with whom, in his business day, I had done many a good stroke in freights, or frights, as he always pronounced the word. He was a hearty