Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/74

 66 principal tenant, who, he found, had been mainly instrumental in effecting this change, the answer was:

“Why, you see, sir, it was a deal o’ money we had to give you chap; t’ ould maister was good enough for the likes of us. What’s t’ use o’ such a deal o’ schooling? You see, sir, I was at school mysel’ for a month when I was a lad, and what good did it do me?”

Certainly none. The objection was unanswerable. A school-room was built, and a first-rate master engaged. We had to build a house for him, and this contained a room large enough for us to gather our people together, and to give a lecture in, occasionally. The master had under his care a well-selected lending library; but I think nothing we did gave more pleasure, or promoted more the happiness of young and old, than a system of prizes for the prettiest and neatest flower gardens. Our cottages were low, miserable places: to rebuild them all at once was to us an impossibility. Most of them consisted of one room on the ground floor, with one above, reached by a narrow ladder, and a “lean-to” behind. It was a service of difficulty to visit the sick. One poor woman, who was yearly in an interesting situation, and who had broken her arm, the bone of which had never afterwards united, was always unable, for the last month, to climb her perch, and used to take to her bed at that period, and lie there, patiently awaiting the event! It is well old times are passed away, when such dwellings could be built for labourers. By fencing in the ground before their doors, and thus giving each a neat little plot of ground, it was for many months of the year like an additional room. It was most pleasing to see every spare moment devoted to these little gardens, which were altogether de Saxe, for they had others for cabbages and potatoes out of sight. The whole aspect of the village was altered; a small sum effected it, and it answered so thoroughly, that I am tempted to give the rules by which the prizes were obtained, to show how much may be done with small means, when they exactly hit the circumstances of the case: given, a frightful village, to make into a sightly and pleasant one.

The garden was delivered over into my especial charge, and the gardener duly informed that my orders were to be carried out. He had lived all his life on the property, and a garden, according to my understanding of the word, he had never seen. If he had been altogether ignorant, I should have had hopes of him; but he was self-taught—a genius in his own estimation, and the oracle of the village. He had the most supreme contempt for all female learning. My husband had told him that the garden was my exclusive domain, and that every order I gave was to be carried out exactly, to which he replied, “Yes, sir, we must indulge the weaker sex.” The “Gardener’s Chronicle” he would not read. “He had learnt all that when he was a ’prentice.” His learning was indeed overwhelming. He was transplanting for me a shrub, which I was unacquainted with. I asked him its name. He left his place, came within a few paces, placed his foot on his spade, assumed an attitude: “That, mum, is the Athenian Laurel, with which the ancients bound the brows of their heroes at the Olympian games.” This was said with a look of, “What have you to say to that, mum?” I found contention with him hopeless. I had brought the loveliest plants with me, which all died under his hands, so his days in our service were numbered; for utterly deprived of society as I was, if my garden had failed me as an amusement, I should have been badly off indeed.

In many outlying districts, money that has been left for charitable or benevolent purposes, has been diverted by neglect and the cupidity of overseers from its original intent; and it is very useful to look up these things and restore them, when feasible, to their rightful purpose. Money had been left by a benevolent ancestor to maintain a footpath between our church and a distant village. For generations the overseers had appropriated this sum for mending the roads (such roads!) and saving their pockets. My husband set this right, and a nice dry causeway was made through the street, to be carried on as the fund allowed. Our predecessors had been quite old, jog trot, country gentry, who had never thought of this, nor of an open sewer, which ran the length of the village. We found typhus a constant autumnal visitor—it left us for ever under the new régime.

In making my calls and ascertaining exactly of how many each family consisted, I was truly shocked to find the number of, what they were pleased to call, love children, and the very lenient view taken of lapses of male and female chastity. One old woman, who I knew was unmarried, showed me, with evident pride, two great louts who had come home on the Saturday to bring her their linen to wash.

“Your sons! I did not know you were a married woman!”

“Well, you see, mum, they were little mistakes of mine when I was young.”

Little mistakes indeed! I showed my disapproval of all such proceedings by omitting to invite any such delinquent to our tea-drinkings, and by giving no caudle to such damsels as returned to the paternal abode under disgraceful circumstances.

Neither parents nor children seemed to view this great sin as they ought.

My garden-prizes were strictly for gardening. It so happened that the greatest scamp in the parish obtained the highest prize the first year. It was suggested by a friend that it ought not to be given him, on moral grounds; but I adhered to the rules, and I have reason to believe that the