Page:The English Peasant.djvu/171

 A clergyman at East Church speaks of "the heavy, overworked, weary young men, who scarcely know their alphabet."

The only possible means of preserving the little knowledge they have is to be found in the evening school. But such a school rarely prospers in a purely agricultural district, simply because those for whom it is intended are too tired to come to it. After a long and perhaps wet day's work, it is not in human nature to quit the warm fireside and the family supper to goad the poor bedulled intellect into tiresome effort. Warmth, indeed, may sometimes attract a poor lad, who cannot get much of it at home. "Let me sit by the fire, and I'll do a jolly good sum, and no mistake about it," said one such boy to a friend of mine, a teacher in a Kent night-school.

While these schools can never supply the place of regular and daily instruction, they may and do keep alive the desire for better things. My friend quoted above sometimes enlivens his lessons by reading a little tale, and finds those most acceptable which describe a higher state of society than that to which the boys are accustomed.

"I wish I was a gentleman," said one boy.

"What would you do?" he was asked.

"Sit in front of the fire and eat bull's-eyes," he replied.

There is another occupation which stands much in the way of the young waggoner becoming a very zealous attendant at the evening school. He may forget his letters, but he never forgets the art of love-making. He finds that he can soon earn what to him seems a good bit of money, and his thoughts naturally turn to settling in life as his fathers did before him. I cannot say whether he goes about it in the same business-like way that they did.

With a certain prospect of getting a living as long as health