L.   s.   d. 
By expenses of removal  . . . . . .  10   0    0
By alterations and labour . . . . .  12   0    0
By cost of furniture for living-room
and four bedrooms . . . . . . . .  50   0    0
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L72   0    0
Against which, by sale of goods in
London  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  38   0    0
-----------
Leaving total outlay of . . . . . .  L34   0    0
-----------

I am conscious that to a townsman, accustomed to the wastefulness of towns, some parts of this account must appear incredible.  Take, for instance, the bill for labour.  No one has ever lived in London without having occasion to complain of the dearness and badness of labour.  The chief object of the town artisan is to do as little work as possible.  He is absolutely without conscience in his work, and all that he does is slovenly.  He surveys a job, and meditates upon it for an hour—­at your expense; begins it, and goes away to fetch a tool that he has forgotten—­the time of his absence being duly charged against you; procrastinates and dawdles; sits down to read the paper, if no one watches him; and in one way and another takes quite twice as long over a job as is needed, and then does it badly.  When I first became a householder in London I naturally sent to some neighbouring employer of labour for any little jobs of carpentering and plumbing that needed to be done.  I soon had to relinquish the practice.  If a new latch were put upon a window, the screws were driven into the old holes, so that in a week the latch was off again.  If the plumber effected one repair he invariably left some damage that made it necessary to recall him before the month was out.  There are houses in London which must be as good as an annuity to local tradesmen; I believe the workmen are instructed to do their work so badly that it is never really done.  I soon found it wise to learn how to do repairs for myself; and it was by doing them myself that I discovered how I had been victimised by the rapacity, dishonesty, and inefficiency of the British workman and his master.

But in the country things are different.  The village workman has honest pride in his reputation, and in his work.  Moreover, he can turn his hand to anything, he does not grudge his time, and he is not corrupted by the contiguity of the public-house.  The man who did my masonry work for me was a grey-haired, silent, pertinacious fellow, of great practical intelligence and efficiency.  He did not work rapidly, but all that he did was thoroughly done.  The carpenter was a man of the same type.  He took a genuine delight in fitting my oak to its new uses, and had ideas of his own, which were often ingenious, and always practical.  He even had a true artistic sense; uncultivated for want of education, but real.  I understood the extraordinary skill of mediaeval craftsmen through my association with this man.  The pieces of exquisite carved oak which find their way into museums to-day were wrought by men such as