Most of the men sang or whistled as they dug or hoed. There was a good deal of outdoor singing in those days. Workmen sang at their jobs; men with horses and carts sang on the road; the baker, the miller’s man, and the fish-hawker sang as they went from door to door; even the doctor and parson on their rounds hummed a tune between their teeth. People were poorer and had not the comforts, amusements, or knowledge we have today; but they were happier. Which seems to suggest that happiness depends more upon the state of mind—and body, perhaps—than upon circumstances and events.

4

At the “Wagon and Horses”

Fordlow might boast of its church, its school, its annual concert, and its quarterly penny reading, but the hamlet did not envy it these amenities, for it had its own social centre, warmer, more human, and altogether preferable in the taproom of the “Wagon and Horses.”

There the adult male population gathered every evening, to sip its half-pints, drop by drop, to make them last, and to discuss local events, wrangle over politics or farming methods, or to sing a few songs “to oblige.”

It was an innocent gathering. None of them got drunk; they had not money enough, even with beer, and good beer, at two pence a pint. Yet the parson preached from the pulpit against it, going so far on one occasion as to call it a den of iniquity. “‘Tis a great pity he can’t come an’ see what it’s like for his own self,” said one of the older men on the way home from church. “Pity he can’t mind his own business,” retorted a younger one. While one of the ancients put in pacifically, “Well, ‘tis his business, come to think on’t. The man’s paid to preach, an’ he’s got to find summat to preach against, stands to reason.”

Only about half a dozen men held aloof from the circle and those were either known to “have religion,” or suspected of being “close wi’ their ha’pence.”

The others went as a matter of course, appropriating their own special seats on settle or bench. It was as much their home as their own cottages, and far more homelike than many of them, with its roaring fire, red window curtains, and well-scoured pewter.

To spend their evenings there was, indeed, as the men argued, a saving, for, with no man in the house, the fire at home could be let die down and the rest of the family could go to bed when the room got cold. So the men’s spending money was fixed at a shilling a week, seven pence for the nightly half-pint and the balance for other expenses. An ounce of tobacco, Nigger Head brand, was bought for them by their wives with the groceries.