The influence of the low public upon the agricultural labourer’s life is incalculable—­it is his club, almost his home.  There he becomes brutalised; there he spends his all; and if he awakes to the wretched state of his own family at last, instead of remembering that it is his own act, he turns round, accuses the farmer of starvation wages, shouts for what is really Communism, and perhaps even in his sullen rage descends to crime.  Let us go with him into such a rural den.

Beware that you do not knock your head against the smoke-blackened beams of the low ceiling, and do not put your elbow carelessly on the deal table, stained with spilled ale, left uncleaned from last night, together with little heaps of ashes, tapped out from pipes, and spots of grease from the tallow candles.  The old-fashioned settles which gave so cosy an air in the olden time to the inn room, and which still linger in some of the houses, are not here—­merely forms and cheap chairs.  A great pot hangs over the fire, for the family cooking is done in the public apartment; but do not ask to join in the meal, for though the food may be more savoury than is dreamed of in your philosophy, the two-grained forks have not been cleaned these many a day.  Neither is the butcher’s wooden skewer, just extracted from the meat, an elegant toothpick if you are fastidious.

But these things are trifles when the dish is a plump pheasant, jugged hare, brown partridges, or trout—­perhaps not exactly in season—­as the chance may be; or a couple of boiled fowls, or a turkey, or some similar toothsome morsel.  Perhaps it is the gamey taste thus induced that enables them to enjoy joints from the butcher which are downright tainted, for it is characteristic of the place and people on the one hand to dine on the very best, as above, and yet to higgle over a halfpenny a pound at the shop.  Nowhere else in all the parish, from the polished mahogany at the squire’s mansion to the ancient solid oaken table at the substantial old-fashioned farmer’s, can there be found such a constant supply of food usually considered as almost the privilege of the rich.  Bacon, it is true, they eat of the coarsest kind; but with it eggs new laid and delicious.  In brief, it is the strangest hodge-podge of pheasant and bread and cheese, asparagus and cabbage.  But somehow, whatever is good, whatever is held in estimation, makes its appearance in that grimy little back room on that ragged, dirty table-cloth.

Who pays for these things?  Are they paid for at all?  There is no licensed dealer in game in the village nor within many miles, and it seems passing strange.  But there are other things almost as curious.  The wood pile in the back yard is ever high and bulky; let the fire burn never so clear in the frosty days there is always a regular supply of firewood.  It is the same with coal.  Yet there is no copse attached to the place, nor is the landlord ever seen chopping for himself, nor are the farmers in the habit of receiving large orders for logs and faggots.  By the power of some magic spell all things drift hitherward.  A magnet which will draw logs of timber and faggots half across the parish, which will pull pheasants off their perch, extract trout from the deep, and stay the swift hare in midst of her career, is a power indeed to be envied.  Had any enchanter of mediaeval days so potent a charm?