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-W^ibpS'ljft-

tamaa

LITTLE HODGE

BY THE

AUTHOR OF '*GINX'S BABY"

■■' 4

• m*

NEW YORK

DODD & MEAD, No. 762 BROADWAY

1873

AUTHOR'S EDITION,

N**

!^^>

Stereotyped at the
WOMEN'S PRINTING HOUSE
No. . Misdon P,«e. bet. Park and Worth St,., one blodc ^ of Cent,,.
I \ '• ' Nhw York.

PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.

In the English edition of this story, the conversations of
the country-people are written and spelt in the Dorsetshire
dialect, i have thought that, in preparing it for American
readers, it would be better, while retaining the idiom, to
correct the orthography of the dialect, and this is the only
difference in the editions published simultaneously in both
countries. • . ^ ;

The subject of this story is one that may be remote from
the knowledge or the sympathies of American readers, yet
it will, I hope, be found that its relations and lessons are
wider than the subject, and that it possesses a general
human interest. The problems of Labor and Capital are
not local ; their conditions are much the same everywhere ;
and the spirit of the solution herein glanced at will be
equally at home in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ottawa,
Somerset, and Dorset. Moreover, I have taken the liberty
of bringing Brother Jonathan on the scene, to aid, with his
younger and sharper wit, the bucolic and fuddled intellect
of old John Bull.

^■---■- '^-/ ' /* , E. J.

Catbrham, Surrey, December 7, 187a. . , *»

CONTENTS.

-:o:-

PART I.

INTO AND OUT OF THE UNION.

CHAPTER it 'AC*

I,— A Matter of Life and Death . . . • . I

II.— Wasted Grief 4

III. — A Competency . > 7

IV.— The Mockery of Hope . * . . . . . II

V. — Parochus in Council | 13

VI. — Focal Government 17

VII. — Local versus Focal 23

PART IL

OUT OF ONE UNION INTO ANOTHER.

I. — The Rigor of the Impossible 30

II. — Notice before Action 3*

IIL— The Church and Social Science • . • • 39

IV The Last Resort • 4^

V. — Sammy Stedman 54

VL— A Curious Bethel 7'

CONTENTS

PART III.

UNION AND rUSUNION.

CHAPTER

I.— The Tournament of Capital and Labor

II. — An Inarguable Case
III.— The Mushroom Hat on its Defence .
IV.— A Noah's Dove . . .

v.— A Ukase on British Soil .
VI.--Justices» Justice and Statutes at Large

FAGB

84
88
92
96
98

PART IV.

I !

THE CLIMAX OF DISUNION.

!• — A Welcome Home .

II.— The Agonies of Solution
III.— An Antidote to Proselytism
IV. — Argumentum ad Hominem

v.— The Scales of Justice

VI.— Alarums.— Excursions .
VIL— A Visitor . .

VIIL— A Dark December .
IX. — The End crowns the Work

- • • •

• • • •

• « .

• f • •

107
110
118
121
199
ia6
129

139
141

, CONTENTS.

PART V.

UNIONS AND COMMUNIONS,
CHAPTER

I. — ^Yankee Intervention

II.— A Veiy Dry Chapter
III.— Little Pilgrims
IV. — A Merry Christmas

PAGB

162
165
i63

ITTLE HODGE.

PART I.

INTO AND OUT OF THE UNION.

CHAPTER I.

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH.

"Three pounds five ounces and a half," said the Union
cook, ringing down the half-ounce on the balance to equalize
the scales.

In the tin scale on the other side lay on a white clof the
minutest piece of living humanity that perhaps ever came
into the world.

"Well!" said the doctor, "it's the smallest child I ever
knew born alive. It's hardly worth the trouble the poor
woman has had with it."

" Hum ! " said Mr. Mee, the Master of the Union ;
" these people thinks nothin' of the trouble and exp ^nse
they are to the Parish when they breeds. It's a curis law
that provides for keepin' sich chits as that alive now, ain't
it?"

" Poor little creetur ! " said the nurse, taking up the morsel

)

■•■'■fW!SS>3;:)FV .

L ITTI. K nODGE.

of humanity from its uncomfortable position in the v/oric-
house scales, which had been brought up from the kitchen
expressly to test its specific gravity. "It ain't got enough
body to keep the life in it, I'm afeard. Its lungs can't be
larger than straars, can they, doctor ? "

" This child," replied that official, not noticing the defect
in Mrs. Gussett's comparative anatomy, and pointing to the
wee red carcass, which the nurse was proceeding to envelop
in some clothes enormously too big for it ; " this child is
strumous. Moreover, it already exhibits a tendency to hy-
drocephalus. Its head is as large and weighs nearly as
much as the rest of its body. I never saw a human form
alive with such legs and arms — lliey are scarcely fit for a
good sized cockchafer. In Sparta, now, they >vould have
drowned tlii). little animal immediately; or amorg some
Indian tribes of North America, Mrs. Gussett, it would have
been your duty, when you saw so conspicuous a fliilurc of
nature, to place your finger and thumb tightly on its wind-
pipe, and save the tribe any further anxiety in regard to it."

A groan from (ho bed here interrupted the conversation —
a bed in the lying-in ward of the Coddleton Union, in Rus-
setshire, where this conversation had taken place. The
woman from whom the groan proceeded was Mrs. Hodge,
wife of John Hodge, of Hankcrlcy, in the limits of the Union
— a woman who had come here for the eighth and last time
to be delivered of a child at the cost of the Parish, and had
just produced to the world the unprecedented and abortive
curiosity which had been the subject of scientific remark. 1
say there was a groan from the bed at the close of the

A MATTER O T F, I !• K AND D HAT 11.

doctor's liisforic and social reminiscences, and Mrs. Giissctt,
saying, "Ah, poor creetiir! I'm afeard she ain't worth much,
doctor," approached the bed.

As she drew near with the little morsel in her hand — it is
impossible to speak of so tir.y a parcel as occupying her
arms — and leaning kindly over the woman asked her if there
was anything she wanted, the latter with sudden energy
snatched the small bundle from the nurse's grasp, and draw-
ing it to her bosom with all her remaining strength, burst
Tito a passion of tears. Talk of drowning and choking it?
The flood rolled down fro.n her white, thin cheeks — oh so
pale and so poverty-stricken ! — baptising the little youngling,
and adding to the bubbling springs of its tirst sorrows rivers
from the deep exhaustless ocean of a mother's love. Only
a minute or so it lasted, in which the puzzled nurse tried to
cheer her and get the child away. Closer and closer she
drew it, until all at once the tears ceased, the heaving
breath stayed, the arms loosened their convulsive hold.
The Union had done all it could for Mrs. Hodge living — it
now only remained to it to bury what was left of her.

At an exclamation of the nurse the doctor had come for-
ward and taken the dead hand in his own, to drop it again
immediately. , >i :

" I expected this," said he, coolly. " The woman had
scarcely a drop of blood in her. iler circulation was a
mere dribble. Carrots and turnips and cabbages, Mr. Mce,
I expect every day of her li<e ; hardly ever a Ltt of nourish-
ing diet. I wonder these peo^Je have any children at all."

" Yet they do," said Mr. Mce, " and they come here to

LITTLE HODGE

have 'em. We're most unfortinit in this Union. The child
will have to be brought up by hand, and the father's sure to
come upon us for it."

" The mother then never could have reared it,'* said Mrs.
Gussett, as holding the child in one hand she drew the cov-
ering off the bosom of the dead woman with the other, show-
ing the pale, skinny breast, shrunken and depressed with the
want and care, the famine and pain, of five-and-thirty years.
" S'^e'd never had anythin' for it anyways. It's as well she's
gone, poor thing ! " And the woman, with a touch of rever-
ence, covered up the shrunken body, and turned away with
the child from the coffin of its hopes.

" I'll just book the case," said the doctor, making a mem-
orandun?. " No inquest will be necessary, Mr. Mee. * In-
anition after child-birth.' You had better try the little thing,
Mrs. Gussett, with that young girl who came in yesterday
from the Hall. She's healthy enough. Good-evening."

CHAPTER II.

-^\(^

WASTED GRIEF.

The next morning John Hodge, having, with the assistance
oi his eldest girl aged thirteen, dressed his children, and
concocted a queer mess, whereof bread, cabbage, and an
inch of bacon, with a great quantity of water, were the con-
stituents, called at the Union to inquire how it fared with
his wife. "^"^'^'^ "~"' --— -^. _

The porter at the door looked at him not imkindly, know-

WASTED GRIEF

ing that the shell for his wife's body had only preceded him
upstairs a few minutes.

" There's bad news for you, John," said he. " You may
go into the Master's room. He's there, I IVleeve."

" Ah ! she've a had the baby then ? "

The other nodded.

" Born dead, I s'pose ? " continued John, the reality not
occurring to him as possible. *' Ah ! well, they're hard to
bring up these times. She'd had a goodish deal o' trubble
an' hard work, poor creetur ! But she will take on so about
it, I know." ,:

" Hem ! said the porter. " The baby's all right so far
as I hear, John, though they do say it's the littlest ever was
born."

" The baby's all right an' bad news for I ? " said John, his
mind slowly harking back to the man's first words, his eye-
brows rising in pain, and his whole face transformed as with
a sudden revelation of the truth. '* Is anything the matter
with Mary then ? "

The porter nodded again.

" Oh ! she'll get over he," said John, confidently, compress-
ing his lips, as was his wont, to show decision. " She's a ben
very ill afore, but she alius cum round, she did. She's
stronger nor she looks, is Mary."

** She'll never come round agaiii; Johr," said the other,
softly but firmly.

" What I " said John, the drops instantly spouting from his
shower. "Ee doi

eyes

perfect

say my Mary

■a—apaai

I, ITTLE HODGE.

Tummas? Eedon't mean/Z/d!/, Tummas ! My Mary dead?
Dead, Tummas? Ee don't say so, do ee ? "

The man was bereft. His most expensive luxury was
gone. The base accomplice who had conspired with him
against all social law and well-being to produce eleven other
expensive sorrows, was taken away. The partner of a hard
purgatorial life had left him alone with the brood of their
joint stupidity and criminal recklessness. The mouth that
swallowed up a part of his petty earnings — though God Om-
niscient knows 'twas ever the least and worst remnant of all !
— was now closed and would no more exact its toll from his
scanty life-gage. Yet there was this miserable man career-
ing round the hall of Coddleton Union in a state of incoher-
ent grief because " Mary was dead ! " .

When John Hodge had wept awhile over the appropriate
shell that contained the poor remains of his dead wife, he
was conducted to a room where his tiny offspring was taking
in life from a girl who had " met with a misfortune " at the
Squire's. His exclamation, when wiping away from his red
eyes the film of grief he caught sight of the diminutive creat-
ure, resembled that of its late nurse. '

"La bless me, baint he a little un 1 Why, he ain't big
enough to live, be he ? "

The grotesquerie of the thing for a while stayed the cur-
rent of Hodge's sorrow. He was the father of the smallest
child in the world.

^i^OSlW

.J^M'i

A COMPETENCY.

CHAPTER III.

A COMPETENCY.

Little Hodge remained a week in charge of the unlucky
damsel from the Hall. He was of a size to want but little,
and seemed by nature quiet enough. The cries of such a
one could not at all events reach very far. Had the Public
and the Parish been content to leave him where Providence
seemed to have placed him, the beau-ideal of conservative
policy would have been attained, and he might have devel-
oped into an under-sized but ordinary man, with a history
unworthy of note. But the Press got hold of him. When
the Press gets hold of a child or a man, quietness for that
cliild or that man is imperilled forever. Who then can say
whether that child or that man shall ever repose again in the
bosom of the unforgotten and unknown ? A paragraph ap-
peared in the weekly sheet issued at the county town, an-
nouncing that the smallest child in the world had been born*
in Coddleton Union. This paragraph naturally slipped into
sly corners in the provincial and metropolitan newspapers.
Along with the advertisements of Hollowa/s pills it reached
America, Australia, and the Sandwich Islands. Here was
fame achieved without any effort on the part of its object.
Many visitors came to the workhouse — physicians, surgeons,
comparative anatomists, and one or two social science phi-
losophers. They all arrived at the conclusion that he was
very small, and were agreed in the conviction that he could
not live. A gentleman notoriously connected with national

^^^^M

LITTLE HODGE.

lii

shows determined, on this contingency, to utilize him for the
public benefit. He made advances to the Master of the
House for the transmission of the anticipated remains, care-
fully corked in a bottle of spirits, to the West Parkton Mu-
seum. Happy had been the fate of our Little Hodge had
he been thus preserved and labelled for the instruction of the
masses ! Whether he would have done as much good as his
life gave rise to, is a question yet to be settled. Meantime
his local popularity was amazing. The Squire and his lady
and their children, and others of the neighboring aristocracy,
went to see him, and predicted for him a career as success-
ful as that of Tom Thumb.

Is it not curious what interest may be aroused by a physi-
cal deformity, compared with the anxiety created by the
most hideous moral or social monstrosities? Neither scien-
tific man, nor county squire, nor parson, nor magistrate,
recognized in this child the presentment of the deterioration
of a class which lent no small share to the production of the
necessaries of life. How often we prefer looking at the
glass instead of through it, examining curiously the concrete
fact and disregarding the abstract principles that lie behind
itl As to these things a dead truth for us is the poet's
apothegm —

" We look before and after,
Aud pine for what Is not,"

for we regard not relations and strain too little after the
better and more perfect. Were we to use our microscopes
to look at many facts which our eyes glance over to pass
away, ignorant of their before and after relations, of their

( II

A COMPETENCY.

real substance, how could we in con«^cience permit those
facts to lie as disregarded as we do ?

But another, to Little Hodge, more immediately impor-
tant power whose attention was given to him, was the Parish,
and in its hands his fate by the law of England and the will
of Providence hung poised. John Hodge, his father, was a
laborer employed by a neighboring land-tenant, who to give
respectability to his rough tweed clothes and rougher man-
ners was called a gentleman-farmer, at the current wages in
that neighborhood of nine shillings a week. He had a cot-
tagt; rent-free — a tenement I may hereafter describe. In
front of the cottage was a strip of soil thirty feet long by
sixteen broad, where, under the late Mrs. Hodge's manage-
ment, rows of green peas and scarlet-runners were wont of
an early spring to flaunt their gay flowers, while towards
autumn the browning leaves and haulms of potatoes or the
martialled cabbages gave token of a thrifty outlook to the
hungry winter. You may ascertain how much this estate
with assiduous care and scientific culture would add to a
family's resources, by an experiment in the background of
your dwelling in Brompton or Camden Town.

This however does not sum up all Hodge's benefits.
For the harveiit weeks Mr. Jolly, the gentleman farmer
aforesaid, gave each of his men a bonus of thirty shillings,
thus increasing their annual stipend in cash to the sum of
;^24 1 8s. Through the same period and in thrashing-time
they were su[)plied with a quart a day of mild ale, home-
brewed, which the honest farmer, to prove how good it was,
would himself take a pull at in the field ; a test he could

LITTLE HODGE.

Stand, though to the ill-fed stomachs of the men it did not
always prove a sedative. The Plodge family also took their
share in the annual gleanings, which added something to
their stock of food. At Christmas each family on the
estate received a piece of beef, a sack of potatoes, and half
a ton of coal from the Hall, and a pair of blankets from a
parish charity. The second boy of the family earned two
shillings a week for seven or eight weeks in the year, in the
corn-fields or elsewhere.

We may therefore sum up Hodge's total receipts and re-
sources for the food, clothing, and hou3ing of his family,
consisting of two adults and ten children. Little Hodge, for
the time, being out of the question, as follows :

In Money.

His Wages — 52 weeks at 9s. a week
Harvest Money extra . . ;
Jack Hodge — 8 weeks at 2s. a week

■".».-^ I
•.

s.
8

Cash receipts per annum

• ^^S

In Kind.
Gleanings

60 Quarts of Mild Ale at 3d. (?) .

10 lbs. of Beef at iid. .

I Sack of Potatoes.

Half-ton of Coals at 21s.

I Pair of Blankets

. ^3

9
6

Total value in kind. ,

. ;^S

sa^f"

THE MOCKERY OF HOPE.

If \vc place upon the house and its small allotment the
extravagant rent of eighty shillings, it appears that at the
highest estimate Hodge's whole receipts reached thirty-five
pounds a year ; out of which he had to keep himself in
working condition, to clothe, feed, educate if might be, a
family. Both he and his wife had always abhorred the
workhouse, but it will scarcely be held to their discredit
that they had la erly found it necessary, on such critical
emergencies as the one with which our story opens, to apply
to the Parish for its aid. Every ratepayer in the place was
thus practically obliged to contribute something toward
Hodge's wages, and a great deal more toward the wages of
many of Hodge's mates, whose sensibilities were not so
keen or their thrift so notable as those of Hodge and his
wife. No one will have any difficulty in understanding why
Mr. Jolly was an ardent opponent of a rise of wages, and
was wont in argument to point significantly to the full
Union. Was it not cheaper to pay rates assisted by the
Parish, than to pay a rate of wages to keep his laborers oflf
the Parish?

* IK

CHAPTER IV.

THE MOCKERY OF HOPE.

I SAID the Parish had now got hold of the little problem,
Little Hodge. " What will he do with it ? " was a question
it might have puzzled any Tory novelist to answer, and may
puzzle matiy such novelists for many a year to come.

LITTLE HODGE.

When John Hodge with a common, dingy bit of crape
around his hat, a child in either hand — the eldest two who
were best able to appreciate the solemnity of the time —
turned away from the brown mound of fresh earth, which he
had to the last moment watched the sexton trimming and
moulding with his spade into some smoothness of outline,
his first thought was — v

"What's to be done with the little un?"

The mother he had heard the curate consign to earth,
in " sure and certain hope " of a joyful resurrection. What
hope was there for the living she had left behind her?
Hodge's heart sank within him when he faced that question
in his slow, congealed mind. God, and the Parson, and the
Parish, and the Master of the Union, and Mr. Jolly, and
his own position,. all seemed to mock him solemnly with the
antithesis to professed hope of express facts. Hodge h:\d a
grim forecast that he would be made legally responsible for
the bringing up of the " little un," and that he dared not rely
on the Parish to keep it a day longer than it could help. '
He never entertained a suspicion that he had been unduly
burdening himself with a progeny. He regarded children
as an institution of Nature or Providence, and as much a
matter of course or no course as a fall of rain or a crop of
wheat. No law to abstain from procreation being written
on his heart any more than it is on the instinct of any other
animal, one cannot bring him within the circle of St. Paul's
responsibles — "their conscience being witness and their
thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one an-
other." On that point how could he have any doubts ?

PAROCHUS IN COUNCIL.

We cannot wonder that he should deem Providence or the
Parish or his master or somebody bound to enable him to
supj)ort his family. At this particular moment, when the
mainstay of the family was gone, this postulate occurred to
him with peculiar force. We shall hereafter trace the re-
sults of his cogitations ; meanwhile let us f jllow the action
of the Parish with regard to his youngest child.

CHAPTER V.

PAROCHUS IN COUNCIL.

Mr. Bond, the Clerk of the Union, Mr. Mee, the Master,
and Mr. Coleman, the relieving officer, were preparing for
the Board meeting. There was the question of the meat
contract ; there was the question of coals ; there ,vas the
question of Anna Maria Simmons, agjd eighteen, late ser-
vant at the Hall, ejected with disgrace, upon a certain dis-
covery, like a kittening cat, and forced to run for refuge to
the Union, while the cause of her disaster remained for the
present an unblemished groom, to ride about with the
Squire's daughters; and lastly there was the question of
Little Hodge. On all the other matters the Master had
formed and formulated an opinion, but Mr. Mee admitted
to himself that on this one he was in doubt. He knew
Hodge's position perfectly well. A man with ten children
at home, the eldest only thirteen, his wife dead, the absolute
claims of life peremptorily demanding that he should spend
ten or eleven hours a day out of his house, it was clear

Illitl

t Ml

inl

iilli
. » ill
I if I

MTTI-K IIODGR.

enough tliat to send liini home the new-born babe to look
after, was to raise a problem for Ilodge doiiblfully soluble.
On ihe other hand, Mr. Mee was eciually clear that the
law, by which he was regulated, threw upon Ilodge and not
upon the Parish the resjwnsibility of solving that problem.
Yet in the hope that something would occur to himself or
to the guardians which might justify the retention of the
little curiosity in the workhouse, Mr. Mce had not dis-
charged his duty, and returned the child to the father the
day after Mrs. Hodge was buried. Mr. Mce was an official ;
he was bound to look at every question from an official
point of view, he was of necessity precluded from involving
natural sympathies with official duties ; but there was a
seldom-reached humanity at the bottom of his heart which
Hodge's long anxious face and Little Hodge's peeping cries
stirred up a little. He ascertained from the girl that the
dwarfish strangeling, so limited were his requirements, really
made no difference to her or her own baby, and accordingly
felt justified in straining a point to keep him in the Union.

The composition of the Board of Guardians is perhaps
nothing to us here. It has to do with those picturesque,
remote, widely-scattered country interests whereof we easily
lose sight from their very want of aggregation and obtrusive-
ness. Yet, in rural districts, great is the power of this body
and important the jurisdiction it administers for thousands
upon thousands of our fellow-countrymen. The Coddleton
Union consisted of sixteen parishes, whereof some of the
incumbents, being Justices of the Peace, were ex-ojficio
members. There w^ere also county squires and gentlemen

PA ROC II us IN COUNCIL.

and a fair proportion of fanners, wiio, though not the most
regular attendants, could always be whipped up to any
meeting of interest. On the day when Master Hodge':
fate was to be decided, the Rev. Winwood Leicester, M.A.,
Vicar of Hanke.ley ; Captain CoUingsby ; Sydney IJyrton,
Esq., of Byrton Hall, Chairman j Mr. Caldwell, a solicitor ;
Mr. Harris, a "merchant," and several others were present.
The meat contract was considered, and a trial of Au-
stralian meat ordered in the old women's ward. The coal
contract was given out to a nephew of Mr. Harris. Spite
of the protest of the Squire, it was ordered that the groom
at Byrton Hall should be summoned to contribute to the
support of Anna Maria's child, the Squire declaring " it was
more her fault than his." Then came up the Hodge
matter. Mrs. Hodge had been buried ; it was no use dis-
puting that item. Mee said it was impossible to recover
the burial expenses from John Hodge, and after some de-
mur the impossibility was admitted.

" Did the child die too ? " said Mr. Leicester, whose
curate had buried the mother.

** No, sir," replied the Master, cautiously.

" What has he done with it, then ? "

" Well, sir, the fact is — hem — we did not like to take up-
on us in the circumstances to order its removal. The
young woman, Simmons, is feedin' it, and she says it's no
trouble to her ; and as it's no expense to the Union, I
thought I had better keep it till the Board decided what to
do with it."

LITTLE 11 O D G E .

" Quite illegal, Mr. Mee," said the solicitor ; " totally
contra legeiny ' :''':^\.: ::*:-':-:'i-'''X'-^P-'--''"^^ <-/■

" But you see, Mr. Caldwell," said the Vicar, " it does
not cost anything, and it seems reasonable in the circum-
stances. I suppose that man Hodge has no one at home
to look after it ? " : ' : ; :

" Not a soul ! '* replied Mr. Mee.

" No mother-in-law or deceased wife's sister ? " asked
the attprney.

** No," replied the Master ; " no relations hereabouts. I
can't think how the law would ever let such as them get a
settlement."

" Bad management, sir — bad management. Between the
new poor laws, and the neglect of the Guardians and over-
acted philanthropy, our interests have been shamefully
neglected, sir."

"However," said Mee, gaining ground, "here arc the
facts, gentlemen. Hodge has ten children at home, and the
oldest is thirteen. His wages is nine shillings a week, and
he must work six days a week to earn them. Who's to look
aiVer this baby now his wife is dead ? "

This simple statement of the situation seemed to startle
the Board as much as the similar oracular but matter-of-
fact utterances of a noble statesman ecstasize the press and
the public.

" Well," said the attorney, " we have nothing to do with
that The man must look after his own infant. You nic"
depend upon it, if we keep the child here we shall have the
Focal Government Board down upon us directly. It is all

FOCAL government!

very well to say the child doesn't cost us anything because
that servant of yours feeds it. Mr. Chairman."

" I beg pardon, sir," interrupted that gentleman, haughtily,
" be good enough to confine yourself to facts. She is not
my servant, sir i "

" Well, she was," said the other, " till she came on the
parish. I did not in the least intend any discourtesy, sir.
I was going to remark that no doubt Anna Maria What's-
her-name will consume more beef-tea and beer in conse-
quence of this extra draught upon her — if you will pardon
the double entendre^ gentlemen — and you may depend upon
it this will not escape the eye of Mr. Mordant."

Mr. Mordant was the President of the Focal Government
Board. The Guardians laughed ai the idea of regarding
Miss Simmons as a conduit-pipe from the ratepayers to Little
Hodge of an appreciable bounty, and, being in a good
humor, resolved that tor the present he should not be dis-
turbed. Hodge's mind was therefore for a while relieved
Trom the pain of solving an impracticable problem.

CHAPTER VI.

FOCAL GOVERNMENT I

To almost supreme control of local administrations in
England, one department of Government has by a series of
successful stratagems at length won its way. In not very
ancient times the people jealously guarded the rights of self-
administration. Any encroachment by the central power

LITTLE IIODGE.

would have been resented, and was resented by that innu-
merable, powerful conclave whom I may combine under the
name of Parochus. Mighty, too mighty in those days was the
spirit of Parochus, and very mean withal, sometimes ! Ves-
tries, guardians of the poor, commissioners of various sorts,
highway boards, and the county magistrates, "/e'-e the auto-
crats of their particular districts ; and an inspecto'' to inquire
into their adn.inistra'.ion, overhaul their books, ask impertinent
questions, and report upon their shortcomings, would have
been an unendurable phenomenon, that might have been
sent back again tc the Minister who sent him with a flea in
his ear. Parochus was confessedly a bad administrator.
He, of all people in the world, could with best propriety
confess in the parish church his sins done and duties left un-
done. Too frequently was he slow, blind, careless, corrupt,
and costly in his ways of doing and undoing. But there
was a paramount good in him which no free people could
afford to overlook or safely forego — he developed and
maintained local action and local independence. When he
had to administer monstrously bad laws for the relief of the
poor, he u'.ifortunately was too human not to take advantage
of them if they could be twisted in his own behoof, or he
was benevolent and reckless with funds not entirely his own.
He regarded the Poor-law as a valuable auxiliary to agricul-
ture, and so administered it. What little he had to do in a
sanitary way he did badly, being on the average as ignorant
of the natural laws of Health as his neighbors and most of
the law-makers. Now the remedy devised by modeni
legislators for these defects in the character of parochial

FOCAL government!

management was not so much to educate Parochus and his
constituency and make them capable and desirous of better
things, as to tie Parochus hand and foot to a supreme cen-
tral power which should force him to do its behests. This
remedy has been applied and is being applied with a heroic
decisiveness that bids fair to leave poor Parochus notliing
but a puppet, dancing to strings pulled by a minister suffi-
ciently histrionic for the purpose, who is ensconced in a
dilapidated old tabernacle of Public Charity in Whitehall.
Important indeed are his powers and sometimes absolutely
necessary, but only sometimes ; the less used the better.
If, however, this absorption of power gees on we may yet
arrive at a time in England when a man will not be free to
blow his nose without a Government order, for fear of prop-
agating the influenza, or under penalties to send the result
to a Government analyst. Any one thinking about it will
see how much easier this plausible and rough-and-ready
means of solution is than a powerful and determined stroke
of statesmanship, by which the laws should be made more
systematic and perfect, local autho*-ities reorganized without
revolution, and locrl action made at once more intelligent
and more vigorous.

Ho\^ever, a great people and its leading press had com-
bined to give themselves up into the hands of the histrionic
minister aforesaid, whoever in the exigencies of party he
miglit happen to be, and the histrionic minister of the day
sat in the Focal centre, with the proud consciousness tliat
every Poor-law board and every local administrative body
and all their officers were under his thumb, and naked and

LITTLE HODGE.

Open to his Inspectorial Argus. The latest case of diarrhoea,
the coughing of some ancient cow, the dismissal of a poor-
house nurse, might form the subjects of elaborate reports to the
mighty Super-parochial Archon at Whitehall. Truth forbids
I should question the unquestionable good sometimes done
by this surveillance, or the too patent necessity for some
intervention ; but 'A is surely not a conclusive reason for
reversing the poHcy of centuries and resorting to central-
ization, that bad laws were badly administered by badly-
cciistituted local authorities. It would seem to an ordinary
mind more rational to try first the effect of better laws ad-
ministered by better-constituted authorities, under a super-
vising instead of a dictatorial power.

Little Hodge was destined to come under the surveillance
of Super-Parochus. Not that the Union nursling made any
noise. Few were his piping plaints and small enough his
needs. But one day as the great Minister sat at his desk,
discussing wilh a permanent secretary and a clerk some
memoranda made by the latter upon reports received from
all parts of the country, he came across the ioUowing
minute ;

" Report from Coddldon Union : generally satisf. Nunt-
bers relieved through the Q^.

Indoor {both sexes) . . ^67
Outdoor .... 1643

Deaths in Union . 8 _ , _.„__-

Births " " .5 ".

" The Master reports one of the latter^ male child of a

FOCAL government!

woman natned Hodge, who died after birth, as smaller than
any child ever kfiown in those parts, weighing only a little
over 3 lbs. at birth. Child of John Hodge, a laborer, with
ten other small children. Its size being so inconsiderable,
and the father being totally uttahle to provide any one to take
care of it, the infant has been retained in the Union, but at
no expense, being suckled by Anna Maria Simmons above
reported'*

The great Minister pensed this minute and knit his brows.

" This is one more evidence," said he, " of the wisdom of
our recent measure. You see how this Board of Guardians
m the most illegal manner keep this child on at the expense
of the ratepayers, when it has a parent whose duty it is to
provide for it. We really cannot overlook this."

" But," said Mr. Dockster, the clerk, " it must be admit-
ted, sir, the case is, as I may say, sui generis. The facts
seem to show that the father could not take care of it, and
it does not appear to cost the Union anything, as it is nour-
ished by the girl Simmons." V

"As regards your first point," said the Minister, " the an-
swer is conclusive. To an able-bodied man in England
nothing is impossible. And as to the second point, who
nourishes the girl Simmons, Mr. Dockster ? Is she not fed
at the expense of the Union, and are we to believe that she
can feed two children on the same diet and stimulant as
would suffice for one ? Sir, it is contrary to reason and to
the laws of physics."

LITTLE HODGE.

" Exactly what I should have said," remarked the penna-
ment secretary.

" Yes," said Mr. Dockster, " this would be perfectly true
in most cases ; but," he added, with a ghastly effort to smile,
" this child is peculiarly diminutive, and I may say, under
correction, {/e fninir/i is non curaf lex."

" Mr. Dockster," said the Minister, severely, " I am aston-
ished that after so many years' service in this department,
and possessed as you are of an intimate acquaintance with
our recent policy, you should quote to Me that hackneyed
and long-exploded aphorism ! I'd have you know, sir, that
in the present dispensation of this department there is noth-
ing too small to be beneath our notice, and it has, as you
well know, been my humble endeavor to organize an inspec-
torial system so perfect as to bring every molecule in the
British Islands within the scope — I might say the microscope
— of the Focal Government Board."

Mr. Dockster was crushed by this tremendous rebuke.
The permanent secretary took up the dialogue. •'

** This matter must be fully investigated. Make a note,
Mr. Dockster, to write a letter to the clerk of tlie Guardians
requesting an explanation." ' ' '"^■

And the august trio passed to other business.

Thus Mr. Caldwell's legal instinct proved true, and the
supreme administrators of the law {fid take note of Little
Hodge's oblique and petty drain on the national resources.

Ah, Mr. Dockster, Mr. Super-Parochus, Mr. Permanent-
Secretary ! but there is an aspect in which tliat aphorism is
a historical text I How long of such minims, and the like

LOCAL VERSUS FOCAL.

of such minims, has the law been too uncareful ? Of the
very poor, very weak, very humble and little ones scattered
over tliis broad, rich country, how small hath been the anxi-
ety of the laws, or of society, the instigator of the laws ? If
now the minims cry out and make themselves heard, and
swell portentously into great bodies, requiring instant atten-
tion, what if the neglect of the past shall have left them such
that caring for them is less easy, or even involves some great
and permanent revolution? Yet will it not be a blessed
revolution alone that we shall turn and care for these very
little ones ?

CHAPTER VII.

V . LOCAL VERSUS FOCAL. -

At the first meeting of the Guardians which took place
after the conversation last reported, Little Hodge was an
item among the agenda. The clerk read a letter in these
terms :

*« Focal Government Board,

*• Whitehall, June 30/^, 18—.

" Sir^" — I am to state, for the information of the Guardians^
that the attention of the President has been called to a minute
in the last quarterly report from Coddleton Union, respecting
the case of an infant, — Hodge, child of John Hodge, of Han-
kerley, stated to be still maintained within the workhouse, al-
though it appears that the father is neither an inmate^ nor
imbecile, nor dead^ nor in receipt of outdoor relief.

LITTLE HODGE.

** / am directed by the President to point out that this is
an irregularity of a grave character^ which demands explan-
ation, or may give rise to a searching inquiry, necessitatirg
the visit of a Special Commissioner to examine into the cir-
cumstances. In the meanwhile I am to ask you to request the
Board to forward to this department a statement of the facts
and of the grounds^ if any, of their departure from the
proper legal course. ' - . ' ^;

'''' I have the honor, 6^r.,
^^ ^^^^^^^ ^ ^ - "Jeremy DocKSTER.

To Peter Plimsoll Bond, Esq.,
^C, dr'C., d^r."

((

»;^ -'•■•'

The Guardians looked at each other when this letter was
read. Mr. Caldwell's face wore a satisfied look as of a man
who had predicted the worst and happily hit upon it. The
Squire first broke silence. Pink, and rosy, and passionate
was the look of his cheeks through his gray whiskers over
his high collar. - : ^^ ^^^ .o- '

" Demme," said he, " this Focal Government Board is get-
ting to be altogether too cocky and crotchety. What the
d (I beg your pardon, my good friend, but really Scrip-
tural language won't meet the exigency of the case) has the
President of the Board to do with our spending our own
money on this trumpery chit if we like to do it ? It's not a
matter of forty shillings, and he threatens us with a commis-
sion ! Why, demme, gentlemen, if this goes on you won't
get any gentlemen of respectability to take a seat at any
board in the country. Are the heads of some of the best

l!3

LOCAL VERSUS FOCAL.

and oldest families in the country to be bullied and hectored
by any upstart jack-in-office who has tickled the ears of the
democracy with his tongue, and got the reward of it from a
Radical Government ? Really, sir-

The Squire's choler grew so hot and foamed so high he
could not express himself, and he thumped his hand on the
table with the vigor of a prize-fighter. He was anything but
a trampled worm.

" I must say," said Mr. Leicester, mildly, " that I think
this is reducing local government to an absurdity. We sit
here as a number of intelligent persons " — the parson's eye
looked doubtfully round upon some of his audience — " sim-
ply to register tiie decrees of Mr. Mordant. Were I not
necessarily a member I should certainly withdraw from a
body so completely overfaced."

The Squire looked approvingly at the parson.

" But what about the child ? " said the attorney. " Is it
worth while fighting the President about so small a thing,
eh ? Our only plea is its size I think, Mr. Clerk ? "

" I know of nothing else," said Mr. Bond, the Clerk, " that
we can put forward as an excuse. We're certainly maintain-
ing the child."

"It's much ado about nothin', to my mind," said Mr.
Harris. *' The child ain't nothin', he don't cost nothin', and
he's not to 'ave nothin'. That's about it, eh, Mr. Cald-
well ? "

" Ha, ha, ha ! very good," said the attorney, who had rea-
sons for keeping on good terms with Harris, but who, seeing
that the Vicar and the Squire did nut move a muscle, sud-

'•mmUm'-

LITTL E HODGE

denly made a violent effort and drew his face into a shock-
ing state of gravity. " But nevertheless, Mr. Harris, a joke
somewhat ill-timed, eh ? For it really is a serious question,
What are we to do ? "

" Fight it to the death, I say," cried Captain Collingsby,
who in his time had done something of that sort in more
than words, and would no doubt have trained a sixty-four
pounder on the offices of Focal Government without any
compunction. " It's not a question of size. If this child
was as big as Og, or Gog either, and required a puncheon a
day, 'twould be all the same. I stand upon the principle of
the thing. If a lubber at head-quarters is to poke his nose
in every little transaction of this sort, when this Board is
perfectly capable of forming an opinion, let him come and
sit here and administer the Poor-law himself. I'm hanged if
I'll sit here to register his orders."

" Hum, Cap'n," said Mr. Harris, tradesman in wholesale
and retail matters all around the district, whose election to
the Board was no little humiliation to some of its members,
for the Coddleton district was an old-fashioned and secluded
one, and Harris was a fellow unpleasantly commercial and
radical, " I think, Cap'n, they might administer it better than
it has been done : more to the advantage of the ratepayers
and less of the gentlemen. Perhaps if you dissensAuns was
to retire we might get in some men who knew somethin*
about business "

" And how to feather their nest," added the Captain.

" There can be no doubt," said the Squire, looking straight
away from the merchant, " that the gentleman has an inti-

LOCAL VERSUS FOCAL

* mate aqiiaintance with business of a certain kind, such as
coals, or tallow-chandlery, and manures, and possibly others
of similar qualifications could be found to undertake the
duties of the Board, especially if their nephews were in trade
also ; but I take leave to say that there are several sorts of
* business,' and several ways of doing 'business,' and if the
country is to have the Poor-law administered as it ought to
be, it must be administered by men of means and position."

"All right," said Mr. Harris, good-naturedly; "but of
course, if the gentlemen retires^ the tradesmen '11 take it
up." '

" But," insisted Mr. Caldwell, " now we have cleared the
air, let me ask again. What is to be done with — a — blank
Hodge Why the deuce hasn't it been baptized, Mr.

Bond?" ..;:.>?^-' <.-m..--.L...:-:^ ■ ,;.:../-.;■'>.,;.:: ..,.-->. -.•^;,

" Not baptized ? " cried Mr. Leicester. " Impossible !
Some one must have done it ! "

,^ The consternation was general. Mr. Mee was referred
to, and it indeed turned out that the troublesome little
heathen had not been received within the pale of the
Church. To the disgust of both the attorney and the mer-
chant, Mr. Leicester refused to go on with any more busi-
ness until this untoward defect was remedied. He could
not conscientiously proceed with a discussion vitally affect-
ing this child's interests, if it were as yet an unreclaimed,
unchristoned child of nature. Dying in that state it could
not be buried in consecrated ground. The Vicar's earnest-
ness and sincerity carried the day. It was informally re-
solved to have the child in and christen him forthwith.

LITTLE HODGE.

Anna Maria brought him into the Board-room and held
him forth while the Vicar, after reading part of the service,
dipped his hands in a parish basin.

"What shall I call him?" asked the Vicar, suddenly alive
to the necessity of a name.

"Well," said the unconscionable attorney, "you might
use a Scriptural authority. * There is little Benjamin.' "

" Little Benjamin," said the Vicar, with his eyes shut, " I
baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Ghost. Amen ! " , v;-

Thus Little Hodge became a Christian.

Resuming the discussion after this episode, the farmers
on the main question joined with the Captain and the
Squire. This they saw to be a critical case. The Minister
was evidently determined to arrogate every jot of authority,
and to make the Guardians what Britons never will be.
By reducing their discretion to nothing, he would diminish
their control of the labor market. It was therefore resolved,
spite of the protests of ex-officio and other members, that a
reply to Mr. Dockster's letter should be sent to the Focal
Governmeni Board, deprecating its interference in ;i matter
solely withiij the province of the Guardians, stating as strong
a case as possible for Hodge and the infant, and announcing
the resolution of the Guardians to continue the parochial
supervision of Anna Maria's bounty to Little Hodge.

Only an Englishman could understand the proceedings
that thereupon followed. A special Governn?ent inspector
— the ordinary inspector was not considered equal to this

LOCAL VERSUS FOCAL.

great emergency — arrived at Coddleton and took up his
quarters at the "Coddleton Arms." He visited the Union,
examined the master, examined Anna Maria Simmons,
examined Little Hodge ; ascertained the exact amount
of pabulum and stimulant taken by the young woman,
and compared it with that given to others of her size
and weight. The result was an elaborate report to the
central authority, in which, after a careful chemical analysis,
Dr. Surchas came to the conclusion that four ounces a day
of food and half a pint of stout was the amount of extra
consumption for which Little Hodge was distiactly responsi-
ble ; that the ratepayers were consequently to that extent
defrauded ; and he advised that immediate action should be
taken to vindicate the law.

In consequence of this report a peremptory order came
down to the Board of Guardians to withdraw at once its
illegal relief from the infant Hodge, and to enforce upon
the father the duty of its maintenance, or serious conse-
quences might ensue to all concerned. The Board yielded
with bad grace. Englishmen are all like Falstaff. They
like not to do even their duty under compulsion, and this is
a characteristic well worthy the consideration of both legis-
lators and administrators.

■ ■ ^w

PART II.

OUT OF ONE UNION INTO ANOTHER.

'' »'«.'

CHAPTER I.

THE RIGOR OF THE IMPOSSIBLE.

Hodge took in very bad part the notice that his tiny son
was to be returned upon his hands, to be by him fed,
clothed, tended, and brought up to years of laborious dis-
cretion. There is little room for impartial consideration
when Necessity sets her hard, iron heel upon a man. I
cannot hold him very responsible for what he then thinks
*-nd says. . *■

The problem arising out of the situation had troubled
him at his wile's grave. Now it could no longer be re-
garded, with the eye of a philosopher, as looming in the dis-
tance. Here it was ; a present practical joke of Nature
whereof Hodge was the victim. Yokel-iike he put oiT the
question as long as he could ; and thus it happened that
the day after he had received the notice, he came home t ■>
find Little Hodge chirping in the arms of Jemima Mary,his
eldest hope. From six years old to twelve, Mary's small
arms had held not a few babies, and the shape of her back
had rather suffered by it ; but never had she nursed one so
proportionate with her own size as her present fondling.
So it seemed to Hodge as he looked at the Uttle woman

■"•SP"

THE RIGOR OF THE IMPOSSIBLE.

cradling on her lap the doll-like baby, its brothers and sis-
ters crowding wonderingly around. Their exclamations
\yere very entertaining, had Hodge been in a mood to be
entertained.

A film came over the poor man's sight as he looked.
Then he held his great . ^er towards the elfin child, and it
vainly strove to curl its small tentacles round that horny
stem, as it smiled a quaint smile to its troubled parent. It
was a pretty enough scene this, or would ' ave looked so on
paper, or in fact anywhere except in real life. This man
felt it to be unutterably painful, as he thought on all the
prospects that it suggested. Little Jemima Mary was clearly
incapacitated to be a permanent nurse to the baby. It was
fun to her to hold the then well-fed doll an hour or two in
her arms, but how could she nurse, feed, physic, and tend it ?
And how could he afford to pay any one to do it — or give
up his livelihood to do it himself? He took up the nurs-
ling in his hand as he mused on this difficulty. The " little
un " crowed and peeped like a chicken just unegged, and
the strong man's hand trembled a moment as he thought
how easily a turn of that wrist would relieve him of the
problem. But it grew firm again directly, for there was a
deep gentle nature in this simple rustic.

" Mary," said he, uttering once more the formula ever in
his mind, "b'alnt he a little un?"

"Ay, father, b'aint he?"

*• How shall us keep him, Mary ? WTio's to be a mother
to him?"

" I'll be 'is mother," said Mary, assuming as matronly an

"T,|KP ■-"?-'■':"■>**.'

LITTLE HODGE,

yir as Ler size would admit of. " I can take care on iin
nicely, fayther, so as you'll dress the children. An' theer's
Tummas, 'ee's 'andy too, he'll help we to do it, won't 'ee,
Tumnias?"

To tell the truth, Tummas — his name was not Thomas,
and never was meant to be — preferred bird-nesting and
stile-riding to giving any aid in domestic work, but under
the pressure of his father^s presence, he graciously assented
to this proposal.

" Naw, Hwont do ! " exclaimed Hodge, energetically stamp-
ing his foot. "Thee can't manage it, Mary ! Who's to bile
the taters, an' make the broth, an' dress out all the young-
sters, an' give this little beggar 'is food an' jc .... after him?
Law, but he be a small mowld of his mother ! Poor
woman ! I wish she were here, Mary ! You take the baby,
Mary," said he, softly, putting back the dwariling into Mj^.
ry*s lap as she sat on the stool, and walking gently out of
the hou^e. Mary discerned him but dimly through the
lozenged panes, but she could see that with head bent he
slowly went towards the churchyard ; and her tears falling on
the child's face made it cry. In a minute the otb* nine
were in full chorus.

CHAPTER 11.

NOTICE BEFORE ACTION.

John Hodge, as tlie Guardians had failed him, thought it
right to resort to his master. He must either have tne

NOTICE BEFORE ACTION

child taken care of for him, or get the means to pay for
taking care of it. We need not be hard upon his logic. It
was bad, but natural. We must allow it not to be arguable
that an extra child at home is any ground for an increase of
wages. Yet for a man to be so scantily paid that, even with
honest thrift, such an addition to his expenses should be
fatal to his domestic economy was a fact of enough gravity
to be worth the wage-payer's notice. Any one skimming
starvation at such a hair's-breadth cannot be earning proper
wages, and certainly cannot properly do his work. Hodge
was not at the moment equal to so fine an argiunent ; and,
though he had resolved to ask for better pay, he hung back
when the time came to act on his resolution. Twice or
thrice he lay in wait for Mr. Jolly, but no sooner was he
face to face with the farmer, than the serf's heart in Hodge
failed him : his desires would not stumble out.

Now, however, every day was squeezing frjsh drops of
blood from Hodge's heart. He had been obliged to stint
the other children to get the poor pint of skim-milk which,
badly mingled with the floor by the joint cookery of himself
and Mary, constituted the manikin's diet, or to pay a woman
now and then to come and rescue his house from absolute
chaos. He began to see in his family the painful signs of
hollowness and want. Little Hodge's body seemed to hrink
dismally smaller. Hodge pinched himself and went forth to
his labor of a morning with a gnawing within, which, like the
prodigal, he — the reverse of prodigal ! — strove to appease
with the hips and haws his master's swine would not have

(Mccn.

•K'^miPiiff=^^^f^

LITTLE HODGE.

I I

Think, whether you be man or woman, or hapj)/ little
child, what it is or might be to work twelve hours with
an unfilled stomach, with a yearning for food unattainable
not only this hour, but the next, and the next, and the
next, and so on through the weary working-day, and no hope
that it will be relieved at night! Could you invent. us any
torture more skilful, any physical pain or trial more refined
and unrelenting than this? Yet, how true it is that many
a poor soil-tiller, inwardly gnawed with such cravings as
these, pursues with patience his ill-paid toil, or vainly en-
deavors with some crude woody vegetable to stay his hunger,
and returns at eventide to his home but an apology for the
man he ought to be.

Little Mary, with a God-given instinct of mothcrliness,
cheated herself of some of her own petty portion ; and with
her constant care of the sickening, peevish dwarfling, grew
day by day so thin and haggard, that her father's ?*ncken
heart smote him yet more sorely as he looked at her. God
help me ! The picture of this empty man sitting of an even-
ing, soil-stained and toil-weary, facing the eleven with all
their wants, and brooding over the desperate prospects of
yet more trying times, rises before me with such vividness,
that 1 find myself trembling with an anguish and pity I can-
not, dare not try to express. I can only wonder at his pa-
tience — patience as of a dumb dog ; very beautiful, but oh,
how pitiful ! how pitiful 1

At length flesh and blood could bear it no longer. Des-
peration gave him boldness. He watched his opportunity,
and when Farmer Jolly came into the field where he was

NOTICE BEFORE ACTION.

cutting the grass, the mar;, with a sidelong gait, drew near

the burly tenant.

" If you please, sir, might I say a word to you, sir ?"
"Say a word to me?" replied the farmer, looking hard at

the man. " What about ? "

Hodge. — Why, you see, sir (a twist), you do know (a

shrug), you've a heard, sir (a kick and squirm of the right

leg),-

Jolly. — What the deuce are you driving at? Do you
want some milk for the young un, or the loan of a shilling ?
You've been caught bagging a hare, perhaps, and if so I
cannot help you. We are determined to put down all
the poaching hereabouts.

HoEGE. — Naw, sir, it bain't none o' they things. But
you see, sir, my poor Mary having a died, an' there being no
relashun of the women-kind, sir, left to me as I do know on,
not a soul to undertake care of the baby except Mary, and
her not old enough, nor yet handy to it

Jolly. — Do you want me to take charge of it, then ?

Hodge. — Naw, sir ; but look ee here, sir, if so be as I
could a paid a neighbor's wife or darter to take care oi" the
little baby, we'd could a got along bravely, but 'twould cost
three or four shillin' a week, and I can't spare that from the
wages I'm a earnen, you see, sir.

Jolly. — Then go to the Union. I'm one of the guar-
dians, you know. Get a doctor's certificate of your chil-
drr»4i's illness, and they will give you as much food as you
want.

Hodge. — Naw, sir, thankee, not for 1. I ain't the man

3«

LITTLE HODGE.

for to go an' beg what I ain't a earned, sir. I never did and
I never will, if I starves for it.

Jolly. — The more fool you, then. AVliat's the workhouse
for but to help the like of you at such times ? Why do you
set yourself up to be better than other men ?

The farmer had h't upon a t^uasi-moraX principle applica-
ble to the case, and as people are apt to do when they are
hard up for a good argument, applied it with some asperity.

Hodge. — 'Taint cause I be better'n my neighbors, replied
Kodge. Howsomever Mary an' I, though we've ben put
to for it now an' then, alius kept clear of the Union, *cept at
times when 'tweren't possible to help it, an* please God, I'll
go on for to do the same. But don't ee think, sir, my wages
could be riscd a couple o' shillins ? (There was a tremen-
dous effort at swallowing when Hodge came out with this.)
You do know, sir, I've alius been a spry chap ; I can do
amost as much again as most men in Hankerley, an' I do
say I'm worth more than most.

This was true. Hodge was worth more than any of the
men on the farm, both as regarded experience and ability,
and had he been paid proportionately would have earned
from twelve to fifteen shillings a week. Farmer Jolly was
too English not to see the justice of this, but he was too
English to own it when it did not suit him.

Jolly. — Why, man, you aren't paid in that way. You
know you all go share and share alike pretty much, 'cept the
ploughman. Don't I give ee a house for nothing, and plenty
of ale, and draw wood for you ? You know very well I

NOTICE BEFORE ACTION.

can't rise your wages. Every farmer in the neighborhood
would be down upon me.

Hodge (earnestly). — But, master, is that a reason for not
doing justice to I ? If so be it's true, you do know, that
I does more'n the rest of the folk, an' they all gets their
houses an' ale, an' wood drawn, too, then I do only get the
same wages as they.

Jolly. — Oh, I can't argue with you. Take it or leave it.

Hodge. — Indeed, sir, 'tis the truth; I can't go no longer
as I've been doing. We be all starvin' at home, an' I ain't
eat a fit meal these ten days.

The farmer saw something playing in the man's eyes, but
he said :

Jolly. — If it comes to that, am I to starve, or you, man ?
Go up to the house and tell my wife to give ee a loaf and a
rasher of bacon, and a quart of new milk for the child. But
look here, sir, don't talk to me or any om' else about rising
wages again. If we rise one we'll have to rise all, and it
would be dead ruination.

He turned to go, but Hodge was desperate.

Hodge (with sudden energy). — If you please, sir, that
won't satisfy I. I thank ee for the loaf, an' the bacon, an'
the milk ^or the baby, but 'taint only one meal, and 'twoan't
keep us very long. I've told ee, sir, I can't live an' work
on nine shillin' a week, . n' what's more, sir, /say I woTit.

Hodge had gradually worked himself up to a pitch of in-«
dignant boldness, rare in his slow, passive life. The farmer
was surprised and uneasy at it. The whip trembled in his
hand.

LITTLE HODGE.

Jolly. — D it, do you know who you're speaking to,

you ungrateful cur, you ? You and your family have been
living on my place these twenty years, and after all the
kindness I've :hown you, and never failing to pay you your
wages winter or summer, wet or dry, and gifts at Christmas
into the bargain, you turn on me the first time you get into
trouble, and ask for more wages. And you'll set all the
rest by the ears, too, I'll lay on it. Now, look here, Hodge,
I give you fair warning; I'll overlook it this time, but, if I
hear another word of tliis sort, off this farm you'll go ; and
I'll take good care you shall not get work within twenty
miles. So, as your friend, I advise you to think of it, and
meanwhile, do the best you can for a week, and if you must
have help, go where the others yo ; the parish is bound to
help you. / /

" They've a sent me back my little 'un ! " cried Hodge, as
the farmer strode away. The man's feelings were a com-
pound of regret and indignation. He could not stifle a
curious sense of remorse (so imperfect were his moral ideas)
that a relation of so many years should be jeopardized by his
own act ; it is curious how from long acquiescence or pas-
sivity a sense of meanness often attends the act of repulsion
or change ; but, on the other hand, Hodge felt sure that, apart
from his special need, his claim was just, and that the farmer
had put him off with reasons that were no reasons.
^ I am not careful to analyze Mr. Jolly's thoughts. He
was a good-natured bucolic in his way, thougli he was inca-
pable of arguing out any question of morals or economics
very clearly. We cannot be too hard upon him. He was

■fS^j^^"*™"^

THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL SCIENCE.

as much the creature, ay ! and the victim of a system, as the
other. ;^ •

CHAPTER III.

THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL SCIENCE.

,;; Bitter enough, though necessarily narrow and obfuscated,
were Hodge's reflections upon this interview with his mas-
ter. It showed how terrible was the strain of poverty upon
him, how rcsistlessly loud the voice of his children's wants
at home, that he mechanically went up to Jolly's house, and
received the shameful dole the latter had offered him.
: It gave the poor man twenty-four hours' respite for
thought. *':--:"■ '-'^^^A-:::':r '■■''■'"':'' ^ ^'; '■■. ■-■.'"^'■: •:;S:'''.- ::•:;'■;.

The parish had fiiiled him. His master had repelled him.
Hodge now somewhat doubtfully turned to the parsoi).
When State aid and the law of supply and demand break
down, can the Church be relied on for succor ? The Rev.
Winwood Leicester, M.A., Vicar of Hankerley, a good living
in the gift of the Byrtons, came into that living only a short
time after the present Squire's return from the university.
He had consequently seen a good deal of his patron, who,
appreciating the refined and genial qualities of the vicar»
was his most intimate friend. Mr. Leicester was a man of
that combination growing more frequent as the age goes on
— good family and narrow means. He had brought from
Oxford a culture and reputation which it seemed a pity to
bury in the sequestered district of Coddleton. Yet he set-

I, I T T L E HODGE.

tied down naturally among the landed gentry of his division
of the county, to the quiet, monotonous work, social and
parochial, of his position. On all hands he was respected.
His geniality opened him to the confidence of rich and poor.
At Oxford he had imbibed the views of the Tractarians, and
in the course of years developed into a moderate High
Churchman. In public he appeared in a dress of scrupu-
lously careful cut, not very distantly reminding one of that
of a Roman Catholic priest — a similarity enhanced by his
felt hat, in which, however, he did not affect the rakishness
and ugliness fashionable with some divines.

Mr. Leicester had a curate, who had been recommended
to him by no less an authority than Dr. Fussey himself.
The Vicar found that his confidence in that authority had
placed him in an awkward position. Mr. Linkboy was of
the school of newer, more enlightened, more advanced Rit-
ualists. He exceeded the Vicar at every point. His coat
was longer, his waistcoat was of more cassocky pattern, his
muslin collar was nearly invisible, and his neck was as relig-
iously dirty as that of any Catholic priest in Christendom,
while, to cap all, he wore, overshadowing his white face, a
soft, flabby wide-awake hat of such portentc us dimensions,
that the country-folk around had dubbed him the black
mushroom — or rather, in the worst circles, " twoad-stool."
Mr. Liwkboy, nevertheless, worked hard and conscientiously
against the world, the flesh, and the devil. He eschewed
the one, he mortified .the other, and he did battle with the
third in every form of wickedness from drunkenness up to
Primitive Methodism. True, he found the people regarded

THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

him with aversion as a " Papist." And his antics both in the
church and out of it gave some ground for that suspicion.
There were many who thought him duly quahfied for the
kingdom of heaven in one respect : he had become a fool
for the sake of it.

; When the curate had buried Sarah Hodge he had resolved
to visit her family. Twice he dropped in upon little Mary,
but his grave manners and astounding hat not only excited
her suspicion, but set the greater part of the infant nine off
in unsanctified bowlings grievous to hear. Amid some such
chorus Mr. Linkboy bravely knelt and read some prayers,
and, with proper crossings and ejaculations, invoked on
Hodge's children the benediction of Heaven. Hodge heard
of these visits with a sort of contemptuous gratitude. " Aw,
don't ee mind him, Mary; 'tain't the parson, 'tis tha curate.
They do say he isn't over bright in the head, though he tries
to do a deal of good, so I'm told."

Hodge then, notwithstanding the curate's advances and
manifestations of interest, sought out the more genial parson.
He slowly went up the small carriage-sweep towards the vic-
arage, having just passed his wife's grave before he came
through the swing-gate from the churchyard, one Spring
evening, hearing the lark far up above the steeple singing of
heaven, and for a moment wondering whether the finger of
the spire really did point to where Mary had gone.

He timidly hung about the trellised porch, staring at the
Wisteria which traverst J the front of the house on vine side,
and the magnolia which decorated it on the other. The
Vicar, from his seat at dinner opposite the window, had seen

LITTLE HODGE.

him coming and recognized the man. With his usual kind-
ness he sent out a glass of beer and some bread-and-cheesc,
and when, after dinner was over, he came 'o the porch he
found Hodge in a better frame of mind than the latter in-
tended in coming there. Hodge was not a good church-goer
by any means, and Mr. Leicester knew little of him person-
ally ; but his recent loss, and the extraordinary circumstance
of Little Hodge's history, were sufficient to give the Vicar
an interest in his visitor

" Well, Hodge, do you want to see me ? " The straight,
broad-shouldered clergyman, with his refined face edged
with the trim gray whiskers, and the gray curling hair around
a well-formed head, smiled genially enough on the troubled
peasant. He was a perfect embodiment of the gentleness,
kiidliness, dignity, and sunshine of the Chu

" If you please, sir," rephed Hodge, pulling his hat off.

"Well, see, sit down on that seat in the porch and I will
take this chair," said the other, easily, as he threw himself
into a seat and delicately used the toothpick he held in his
white hand.

"Now, then, how is the little man, eh? Let me see,
* Little Benjamin' I christened him. Is he being well taken
care of? "

" Naw, sir, that be just the thing ; he 'aint been taken
care of, an' he's lookin' very bad, sir, this long while. I've
eleven of 'em, sir "

" Y:)s, I remember. They sent you home the boy from the
Union. Have you not found any one to take charge of it ? "

" Naw, sir. Where be I to get he taken charge on ? You

■m:immm0^^'

THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL SCIENCE.

see, sir, my wages be but nine shillia' a week, and that ain't
a shillin' a piece all round."

" Bless my heart, neither it is ! You ought to have some
help from the Union."

" I don't require no help from the Union, sir ; leastways
I don't care to accept it. I'd rather be independent of 'em
if I can, sir "

"But if you can't?"

* Well, sir," said Hodge, unable to follow out in words or
ide?.s what he meant, " if I can't I'll starve."

" Oh ! nonsense, you're very wrong. Here you are, the
father of eleven children, in the position in which God has
placed you, and under an obligation to avail yourself of
every advantage fo Jiem. If your resources are not enough
to maintain them, you must get help from the parish, that's
quite clear. You should get the doctor to see the baby, and
no doubt he will order it proper nourishment."

" Well, sir, I'd rather take care on *em and do for 'em an*
be upsides wi' the world on my own earnings."

"Ay, ay! but you can't you know, on nine shillings a
week."

" There, sir, you've a hit on it straight I " replied Hodge,
his face brightening up a bit. " That's just what I do say, sir.
J cajit do it on nine shillin' a week ; but if so be I were to get
fair wages, I might do it without comin' on the parish. The
wages be too small, that's it eczacly, sir ! "

The Vicar saw that he had incautiously admitted too
much.

" Well, but nine shillings is good wages hereabouts, and I

LITTLE HODGE.

suppose Mr. Jolly gives you ale and wood, and all that sort ^
of thing. You can't have more than is going, my man.
Neither you nor I can raise wages you know beyond the
market price." . >■ V i*-:

"Sir, I don't call 'em wages when you can't live on *em ;
an' I'm here starvin' on my wages, an' I do say, sir, I'd
ough to have more."

** Have you seen Mr. Jolly?"

"Yes, sir, I've a seed him, an' he do say as he can't afford
more, an' moreover as that th' other farmers wouldent stand ;
no rise of wages." ' ' ' < iu r^^

"I should think not, Hodge, with the Union and out-door .
relief in its present state. You must learn to be content,
man, and don't wish or ask for more than is to be got. If
you are incapable of taking care of all your children, the law
entides you to relief, and it is your duty to take it. As I
said just now," added the Vicar, rising, ** Providence has
been pleased to place you and me in certain positions. I
am not altogether satisfied with mine, you are not satisfied
with yours. But don't you see, it is our duty to be con-
tented with our lot and accept with grateful hearts what God
sends us. My good man," said the parson, kindly and ear-
nestly, " don't let a spirit of discontent get possession of you.
Talk like that you have been having with me will get you a
bad name, and may lead to great mischief all round the dis-
trict." _^.^_^.__„_ .._„ :.

" So it will, I'm afear*d, afore long, sir ! " replied Hodge.
" I don't mean to sit Dy an' see they children starve without
movin', I do swear, an' there be more on 'em as think as I

-mmf^^'"^^^''

THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL SCIENCE.

do think ; and I'd a hoped, sir, as how you'd a helped us
wi' the farmers, to get us all a mite more than we do get
just now."

Mr. Leicester shook his head.

"Ah ! I see," he said, "you little know all that is involved
in what you are asking. I'm a minister of the Church.
What would the farmers say to me for interfering between
them and their laborers ? Go home, my man, and think
better of it. I'll send Mr. Linkboy to see you to-morrow."

"Beg pardon, sir," replied the man, turning his hat round
and round in his hand, "but if that's the curate, sir, if you
please, sir, he do frighten the children wi's queer looks an'
ways, an' my little Mary's 'most afeared ov him. He can't
do no good to us, sir, onless he can bring cow's milk an'
news o' better wages. We don't none ov us care for they
papish pranks, sir. Mo^t any one's glad to seejou, sir, any
tune. Thankee kindly. Good-evenin', sir."

The Vicar smiled to himself as he nodded and turned
away. The idea of Mr. Linkboy, with his quaint £ and
quainter manners, among Hodge's alarmed children for a
while excluded the graver reminiscences of the interview ;
but when these returned he was sincerely uncomfortable lest
this should portend the beginning of trouble in the parish.
The labor-market everywhere else was excited — would the
country lie listless and dead to the crack of doom ?

%•

LITTLE HODGE

CHAPTER IV.

THE LAST RESORT.

From the vicarage Hodge wended his way to the house
of his friend Timothy NollekeriS, the ploughman at Farmer
Truscott's. Mr. Truscott held Charnley Farm of the
Squire. Half-way down a hill, towards the small stream
that, winding with its silver thread through a miniature vale,
divided Farmer Jolly's land from Charnley, was a row of
cottages called " Truscott's Cottages." They had been
built for Charnley Farm, under the tenure of Farmer Trus-
cott's grandfather. The present tenant of Charnley was,
therefore, a farmer by inheritance, and had you seen his
farm you would have said in no other way. Truscott
just managed to make ends meet ; yet, though his farm had
the finest land on the estate, and could have been made to
produce, with care, cultivation, and capital, twice or even
three times its present income, the Squire, from mistaken
motives of kindness and because the connection of the
Truscotts with the property had begun under his grandfather,
did not dis'.urb his tenant. The latter's case was hopeless,
as the Squire's steward well knew, and the man could not
have afforded an extra hundred a year for any purpose what-
ever. Landlords and laborers and money-lenders have to
deal with thousands of such men squatting upon rich English
acres even in this day of scientific agricultural progress.
The laborer, however, loses the most by it. The other two
classes are willing martyrs if they suffer at all.

THE LAST RESORT.

Timothy Nollekens lived in one of Truscott's Cottages.
An undersized man rather was Tim Nollekens, with legs
having a tendency to the bandy, and with the ornament of a
meek and quiet spirit ; but he was long-armed and capable,
doing on occasion a day of fourteen hours' work without
gmmbling. Mrs. Nollekens was rather the reverse of her
husband in every particular. She was, in fact, a good com-
plement. Bigger and more spirited than he, she used before
her fifiii child was born to take her share at the work in the
field. From that time she contented herself with the toil > of
home-management and the cares of home-rule. Of nine
children she had lost three : two by scarlet fever, and one
by " wasting"— that is to say, really of a slow fever, gener-
ated by the poisoned air of her house, and badly treated by
the parish doctor. God places invisible walls between some
people aiid disease. It was a marvel how the other chil-
dren escaped the fatal epidemic. No condition which an
ingenious devil could have devised for the purpose was want-
ing in their case. True, they were kept downstairs in the
living room while their brother and sister lay abed in the at-
tic above ; but their mother went up and down the stairs,
and tended the sick and dressed the healthy with the same
fingers and in the same gown. When the poor little bodies
had been carried away to be buried, the only disinfectant re-
sorted to was soap-and-water with judicious moderation : the
sheets and clothes were mixed and washed with the family
linen, and Mrs. Nollekens was too thrifty to throw away the
shifts the children died in when she had so many left whom
they would fit. The Poor-law medical officer of those days

LITTLE HODGE.

was content to physic existing patients, and did not trouble
himself much about preventive medicine — it was not his
business.

The spring from which the Nollekens family and the other
tenants of Truscott's Cottages drew their water-supply was
the rill at the bottom of the slope, where it ran amidst the
crowding watercresses, fortunately for the consumers, if mod-
ern science be true, since upon the rise above it, outside the
cottages, were cess-pits dug out of the soil. Mrs. Nolle-
kens's ]Dig lived under her back window, whence everything
that could be spared could conveniently reach him. A
member of Parliament not long since reflected with some se-
verity on the new-fangled notion? about health and health-
legislation, instancing the numoer of hale and hearty North-
men who lived almost over their middens ! It would have
done him good to put his nose out of Mrs. Nollekens' s back
window. An hour or two of pillory in that position would
have been fatal to his sanitary scepticism, if not to his life.
However, we cannot blame Nollekens and his wife for think-
ing the smell "healthy" when a legislature agrees with them.

Mrs. Nollekens had not been an unsympathizing spectator
of Hodge's sorrows. She had gone of a Sunday to drop a
tear on the grave of his wife, and had constantly looked in
to give Mary a helping hand, or had permitted the latter to
bring her charge to the cottage and sit in the chimney cor-
ner for an hour or two. But then the other nine young
Hodges were necessarily left in the wilderness, whence Mary
found that these absences were likely to be paid for by dear
damages or disastrous conflicts at home. Mrs. Nollekens,

THE LAST RESORT.

on the other hand, could not spare much time at Hodge's,
so that all the help she could give her neighbor was not very
material. It showed sympathy, though, and the widower
thought much of it. He had talked over his case with Tim
and his wife, or rather with Tim through his wife, and ap-
prised them of h intention to make a demand on his master
for higher wages, Mrs. NoUekcns had then said :

"La, there now! *t hain't of no use. Do ee spose Far-
mer Jolly '11 give ee more'n the rest of *em? Or do ee
spose the rest '11 let ee take more'n they get ? If he do
give't ee he must give't to my old man too. An' there's
Jack Horner, he've a ben a talkin' o' flittin', 'cause wages be
so low an' work so skeerse. But, bless yer heart, the far-
mers they don't care a straw. I do count you're all a-cuttin'
one another's throats, there's so many of ye in these here
parts."

Vlts. NoUekens mig/i/ have thought of the nine children
she had borne !

Nollekens agreed to this by sagaciously nodding his head
and saying — i , ♦

"Th' old woman's right, John." i '

We have seen that she 7ms right. John Hodge, however,
was under a pressure that did not affect them, and that
pressure was forcing him to solve the problem they were not
disposed to entertain. This man was a step beyond them
in the Slough of Despond. He and his children were pa-
tiently starving. When men reach that point they must
cither do or die.

Hodge, then, was making his way to Truscott's Cottages,

LITTLE HODGE

to relate to Tim Nollekens the results of his interviews, and
meeting Jack Horner, he invited that worthy to accompany
him.

"There naw, John ! didn't I tell ee?" said Mrs. Nolle-
kens, combing the tangled hair of her youngest-born with un-
comfortable vigor — "drat ee, hold still I tell ee — Varmcr
Jolly bain't a fool. Sposin' he were to listen to ee, John,
wouldn't the whole lot on us be down on him ? Wouldn't
the rest on 'em rate him for a noggerhead to go and rise the
wages on *em?"

"Stay thee there a minnit, Sally Nollekens," said
Hodge, catching a suggestion from her words. " What do
ee say to this ? Sposin' the whole of us were to agree not
to do no work for none of the farmers athout they rise the
wages two shillin' a week ? "

" Sposin' thee cuts thy throat ! " contemptuously inter-
posed Mrs. Nollekens. She little knew what she was say-
ing, • ' ^ ■

Indeed Hodge's proposal was so novel and daring that it
took the hearers' breath away ; and as it was the first time
he had put it in words, it nearly took away the breatii of the
speaker himself. Mrs. Nollekens as usual would, to a su-
perficial observer, have appeared to be the first to recover
herself: ^ . ^■- :■■■ - ^■;4-.,.--- :;.:;^' , - ::r;, ,, . v.

" Well," she said, confidently, as with a mighty tug not si-
lently endured she brought away the last bothersome knot
from Peter's head, " sommat's a come over ee, John, since
thy wife a-died."

"Sally Nollekens, I'm a starvcn; I hain't had a fitly meal

THE LAST RESORT.

afore to-night for more'n a week. My little Ben, they went
an' called un, be a sickenin. though I gets un all the milk I
can, an ee knows very well they won't none ov em sell none
to ce so long as there be pigs to drink it. Mar/s a wor-
ryin to death. The rest ain't half fed. It's only a bit an a
drop all round for them : their clothes is a wearin out a
sight to see, an' they be a-growin like little beastesses 'thout
a mother to manage 'em. If so be a woman could be got
to look after 'cm, 'taint possible fur I to pay for her."

"Ha!" said Sally, sympathetically, Peter's capillary em-
barrassments being now completely solved, " if ee wer on'y
like some o' the folk, ce'd get along bravely. Look at Absa-
lom Hitchcock ; he's tha laziest beggar i' the parish, but he
knows the way to cheat the Guardians. Ee've alius got a
child or so sick abed — they takes it by turns, I spose — an' the
doctor gives him an order for loaves or soup — a tidy lot ov
em every week. You may get along pcrwided yo've on'y
enough cheek and childern."

"I won't do it!" said Hodge, decidedly. "I say som-
mat must be done. If ee were in my place, Sally Nolle-
kens, ee'd say so too. Why, sposin ee were to die to-mor-
row? " '■■ '^■'■^' " " • ' •'■'''■'''

"Please God, I won't!" said Mrs. Nollekens.

" Please God, her shant ! " said Tim Nollekens.

"But 5posin', I say, her were to die to-morrow, how
would Tim manage witii all they young childern ? 'Tain't in
nater to bear it, an' we'd be a pack o' fools to stand it any
longer. Let's all club together an' go in for a rise o' wa-
ges!"

LITTLE HODGE.

Hodge's desperation was driving him very near the Rubi-
con. The appeal he had made to the good wife's own un-
certainty of hfe rather went home to her, spite of her dis-
claimer. She thought there was no greater born fool in the
general handling and management of children than Tim
Nollekens. He was always letting the babies fall on the
stone flags, or on just provocation would send the bigger
ones to earth in a manner belying his general meekness.
They often suffered vicariously the effects of a resentment
he would, if he had dared, have vented on their mother.
The idea of leaving Aim in Hodge's position carried to Mrs.
Nollekens's Inind such a painful picture of domestic helpless-
ness and absurdity, as awakened her to a sense of the posi-
tion in which they lived and moved. They were simply
skirting a border-land of starvation. Nay, was not one foot
over the border ?

Jack Horner had been for some time excogitating the
wages problem. He was a married man wi':hoat children, a
luxury rare with the poor, if it be a grief common among the
rich. His notion was to emigrate — a notion initiated in his
mind by some of the navvies on the railway that had been
built through tliat part of the country. It has been little
considered how much these lines of road have carried into
the still, secluded counties of England, along with the v'>ar
and bustle of the traffic they have opened up. The hardy
men who built them, many of them travelled from county to
county, many from work under foreign contracts, have borne
with them to the vacant rustics, in a^ ^-house or roadside
gossip, not a few novel ideas, stirring up their sluggish minds

~-fi^^ -t* t^ '■•'"'* %

THE LAST RESORT.

to fresh views of rights and duties, of relations and oppor-
tunities. Everywhere, too, they have picked up and with-
drawn from agricultural life some of the best of the laborers,
converting them into new men, more energetic, enterprising,
and, to tell the truth, unsettled. This alone might be
enough to account for the spread of ideas and the uneasi-
ness that now stir the agricultural laboring class to its very
depths. These long iron lines have cut into the inert mass
of rural society, and have made it impossible it should ever
be the same concrete unity again.

When Hodge came out with the desperate proposal above
reported, Jack Horner clapped him on the back.

" Hooray, John ! that there's the way to talk ! I tell 'ee,
Sally NoUekens, he've a hit the right nail on the head.
Union is strengthy that's the motter of our burrying club,
and I say if you unites for burryin' unite for living as well."

But Nollekens nodded his sagacious head again.

" Don't ee go to do it," said he. " You'll upset the coun-
try wi' yer new-fangled noshuns, an'll rise a drefful spirit
among the farmers. Naw I naw ! be content, I say, Here
have I worked these forty year for seven and eight and nine
shillin' a week, I and my fayther afore me on the same farm,
and though I do say as us haven't had as much as us might
a had we ain't starved yet. Sometimes I've a had a belly-
full, sometimes I haven't, but I've alius lived through it.
Do you leave things alone, man, and you'll pull through.
We've alius a pulled through, and you'll pull through too.

"Will ee shut up 1" said Mrs. Nollekens, who began to
discern some method in Hodge's madness. "Thee'd a set

LITTLE HODGE

there a hundred year, an' watched I a starving ef Fd a let
V<?/ Thee hasn't no more spirit than a rabbit. If so be as
wages is to be made to rise by union, take up with the union
hke a man, and stand up for your rights along with all yer
neighbors. If on'y I was a man I'd show ee the way ! "
And the matron flourished an arm of Amazonian mould.

Jack Horner was not much of a talker, but he here put in
with a practical suggestion. There was, he thought, nine-
score-and-a-half of laborers in their small pr.rish of Hankerley.
Let them try and form these into a Union like those of the
mechanics in towns, and let them send to Sammy Stedman,
the Primitive Methodist local preacher over at Yokelbury,
to advise them how to go about doing it. This was no
sooner bruited than it was declared by all parties to be exactly
what they would have thought of it if it had been put to
them. They forthwith resolved to act upon it. So Hodge
and his friends had been driven from State, Capital, and
Church to the dubious powers of Combination and Dissent.

CHAPTER V.

SAMMY STEDMAN.

Sammy Stedman, to whom our small conspirators now
referred, lived at Yokelbury, in the next union, in a small
cottage owned by himself, to which was attached a piece of
land. This he held in fee, an ownership that had no small
influence in making him what he was. Stedman' s grand-
father, being of thrifty ways, had saved a little money, where-

SAMMY S T E D M A N

with he bought a cottage on the edge of Yokelbury Com-
mon. To this, by gradual encroachments, unregarded in
those da3's, he had succeeded in adding three-quarters of an
acre of land. If the neighboring landowners and farmers
had known how independent a stock would be bred and
maintained from this little e; tate, and the trouble to come
out of it for their heirs, successors, and assigns, they would,
I think, have abolished it at all hazards. Sammy Stedman's
boyhood was warped to sonic extent by the knowledge that
he was going to succeed to this small property, not worth
;;^io a year. He took airs upon himself which made him a-
zany among village fools. But the Methodists in overrun-
ning the country had reached Yokelbury, where they estab-
lished a meeting-house, and where one evening they so bat-
tered and assaulted Sammy's conscience that he straightway
yielded to them, or the Power they represented, and became
a "Mcthody " — nay, not only became a " Methody " but an
enthusiast ; and, moreover, feeling some powers aroused
within him by the tremendous shaking of mind he had expe-
rienced, he took to reading whatever he could lay hands on.
Gradually he developed a capable and practical mind. He
went beyond the field of religion to other things, among them
Politics. Newspapers became his craze. He cheated him-
self of many a meal to buy them, and pored over them till
he knew by heart their facts and reasonings. He became a
local preacher. Sober and honest as the day, he was ad-
mitted on all sides to be a good workman, though his prose-
lytizing activities made him an object of suspicion to not a
few of his companions and employers. It is melancholy to

LITTLE HODGE.

be obliged to record that Sammy Stedman's case is a clear
argument in favor of withholding the Bible from the laity.
His study of it, which was earnest and deep, led him to draw
conclusions the reverse of the State-in-which-it-has-pleased-
Providence-to-place-you theory. Stedman as he grew more
capable was far from willing to be content with the position
in which he found himself placed. On the contrary he felt
that he was worthy of better things, and he determined to
have them. Accordingly, being a methodical man, he argued
with his master from the Bible, from Natural Justice, and
from the Newspapers that as he was worth more than eight
shillings a week he ought to earn it. The farmer, astounded
at this xlisplay of perilous erudition from a lad of twenty-two,
" d — d him for his impudence " — one must grant, the only
alternative to granting his request. Sammy Stedman there-
upon shouldered a bund)e and made off to a nortliern county,
where, as the newspapers had told him, wages were higher.
His wife remained at home, taking charge of the cottage and
children; and ) for many years Stedman came and went,
trudging to various parts of England, and picking up knowl-
edge as a bird does crumbs. At home he was altogether as
objectionable a gift of Providence to his parson's day and
farmer's generation as ever tried the faith of old-fashioned
conservative Christianity. But as Stedman grew more ma-
ture, and by saving and hard work established a position of
independence and a reputation for thorough knowledge of
his calling, he was able in his own neighborhood to command
nearly double wages, and had thus acquired a considerable
reputation. Farmers and laborers equally consulted him in

SAMMY S TED MAN.

their difficulties, and respected the honesty and candor which
always marked his advice. He acted discreetly, but his
mind was always at work on the problems affecting his class,
and on these he was constantly urging upon his fellow-labor-
ers the conclusions to which he had come. Hence it was
very natural that men on such serious business as was con-
templated by Hodge and Horner should think of Sammy
Stedman.

The gossip in Hankerley about this bold proposal soon
went from house to house in the outskirts of the village,
where many of the laborers dwelt, and from one farm to
another. The rumor was that several men at Charnley had
formed a Union. The niral clods were therefore in a state of
effervescence. What this Union might be, what it imported,
what it involved on the part of its members, what it would
do and what it would not, were questions eagerly but foggily
discussed at the lounging corner of the Madcap Inn in
Hankerley, and in many a field through the cool spring-
summer days. Then word was sent round that there was to
be a meeting at the Madcap, and thither one Wednesday
evening, from all parts of the district, began to collect a
crowd that astonished the simple promoters. The Madcap
overflowed ; not much to its benefit, however, for the men
seemed too serious and " queer " to drink. Jack Horner
was there, and Hodge, and Joe Wellsby, who had been a
town-unionist in his day, and Tim NoUekens, who evinced a
disposition to skulk, but was brought up in charge of his
wife. Many women also were there in their quaint sun-
bonnets and short petticoats, their bare arms wrapped up in

LITTLK IlODCJi:.

their aprons, and they all talked in undertones befitting the
gravity of the occasioi\. Sammy Stedman came over early
and with a few favored ones sat talking in the inn parlor,
every available spot being occupied with the cars of eager
listeners. As the meeting numbered several hundreds, it
was plain it could not be held inside, and when Sammy
Stedman had ascertained the rather crude views of his
inviters, he went without, where, raised on a bench on the
green opposite the inn, he took off his hat, and stood look-
ing down ui)on as fresh a sight as ever gladdened a man's
eyes in merry England.

Men, old and young, sturdy and weak, straight and bent,
some with healthy bloom upon their faces, some with worn
and weazened ar/i weary countenances ; women here and
there, browned and comely, but mostly marked by care and
labor ; and all these gathered together after years of dumb
acquiescence in the intolerable, of ignorant inanity of being,
to try to begin a life of fresh thought and action. Somehow
or other a shade of sadness and dispirit played over the up-
turned ranks of faces, as if some disastrous angel had just
swept his gloomy wing across them all. There was not a
smile to be seen.

Sr>mmy Stedman's face, too, was a dead sea when first he
raised his arm for quiet, and he looked as if he were going
to commence a sermon ; but in an instant his countenance
h'ghted up as he opened his h'p^ and the people pressed
together to catch the first sounds. Sammy was a born
orator. He began, in quiet, clear, decided tones —

'' Brothers, we've come together here for a serious pur-i-

SAMMY STEDMAN.

l)ose, and, considering wiiat that purpose is, I am glad to
see so many of you here. I have waited for this day all my
life. I have looked forward to it eagerly, but often with
despair. For I thought tiic agricultural working-man was
the most degraded of all beings wilh which I was acquainted.
( Year, year /) To-day we arc all met here to consider our
condition, and if so be we find our condition is not what it
should be, we are to devise measures, if we can, to c i>;ve
ourselves from that condition. Is that it? {Ees .i3.x/
Theeritbc!)

*' Now, brothers, we've got first to consider what 'tis you
want, and, secondly^ how to set about getting it. {Ah I)
Firsty' said Sammy, dropping insensibly into his preaching
manner, and raising his arm with one finger extended, to
bring it down on his left hand, ^^what is it you want? I'm
rejoiced at last to see you all roused up to know that you
want anything. That's the first step in improvement. You
nmst find out your case is a bad un before you'll set to work
to better it ; just as in religion we have to begin wilh repent-
ance from dead works. You show me a man that's content-
ed with what he is, and I'll show you a coward or a fool.
There's two sorts of contentment : contentment with the
will of God and whatever that brings you, which don't in
any way mean sitting down and thinking He don't mean to
give you anything better if you'll try for it ; and then there's
contentment that sits down idly and wickedly, and lets
things go on as they please without an effort to make them
better. That's the sort of contentment that ends in the
poor-house."

LITTLE HODGE.

" Hear, hear ! " shrieked Mrs. Nollekens, in a voice that
thrilled the whole audience and woke them up to a general
laugh, as she dug her angular elbow into the side of Tim
Nollekens. ■: . ■ w

" Well now, your friends here, the committee — {Oh,
they've formed a committee then I Hear, hear /) — tell me
they've ascertained that you aren't satisfied with your wages
— [cheers) — nor your way of livin', nor your children's pres-
ent condition and future prospects. (Mrs. Nollekens's ap-
probation was vociferous.) And among you there's John
Hodge, whose situation is a reducshun at absurdity — that is,
he's reduced to a laughing-stock, because he's like a male
pig left with eleven young uns to feed and no means of
feedin' them." . •

This coarse joke was only too truly rural not to be re-
ceived with shouts of laughter, Hodge himself joining in with
no small gusto.

"Well, here's three things you've found out, as I found
them out long ago, and there's many more I could mention to
you. There's your position. You have no political rights,
no representation in Parliament. You haven't any knowl-
edge of the great questions arising to atTect your welfare, and
if you had, 'twould only embitter your lot, because you could
do nothing to '^medy it. You're bound hand and foot to
the farmer, and he's bound to his landlord, and so we have
in what's called 'free and merry England' this day two bands
of slaves, handcutfed, as it were, one to the other. Well, if
the better band of slaves — that's the farmers — is contented
and won't wake up and do something to shake theirselves

SAMMY STEDMAN.

free, then the worser band, the laborers, must rise and do
it." ;•,-■-_.. .r _^.: .,_,y:.,.

Sammy Stedman's oratory went a little over the heads of
the folk in this passage, but what with his clear, ringing voice
and kindling manner they seemed to take it all in, and it
woiked like yeast in the unleavened minds of the listeners.
They cheered to the echo. Meanwhile the noise had at-
tracted several farmers to the spot, and the Curate's mush-
room hat flapped gloomily in the background.

"Then," he said, " there's questions a rising between us
and the parson. I've got nothing to say personally against
any of the clergy in this neighborhood. They takes their
pay and says their prayers, and manages their parishes as
well as any folk could do — {Eight huuderd a year ! Ay, mi
a parsonage 1) — but I do say this of the parsons as a body,
and if there is one here," said Sammy, looking straight at
the Curate's felt hat, " I hope he won't be offended — I say
they ought long ago to have taken notice of the terrible state
of things around them, and have boldly preached their duty
to the farmers. They've been preaching to us to be con-
tented with Providence — why didn't they preach to them^ as
their Master did, about the duty of the rich ? There's a
text for them in one of the epistles, and perhaps the rever-
end gentleman I see listening to me will take a note of it
and preach a sermon from it some day : ' Go to, tww, ye rieh
tnen. Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped
down your fields, whieh is of you kept back by fraud, erieth,
and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the
ears of the Lord God of Sabaoth' "

LITTLE HODGE.

This passage, delivered widi all his force, made a deep
impression upon the people. One or two of the farmers
hissed, and in a moment the fierce spirit that underlies the ;
character of the patient hind broke out with threatening
fury. A Babel of cries arose, above which Mrs. NoUekens's
voice ruled pre-eminent, and the crowd turned round upon
the intruders. At this moment the great mushroom hat was
pushed in between the laborers and the small knot of farm-
ers. ' " ■ '■• ■ -

" Gentlemen," shouted the Curate to the latter, taking off
the hat and waving it frantically, "for God's sake don't ex-
cite the people by useless insult. They maybe right or they
may be wrong, but they are entitled to hold their meeting
and say what they please, and I beseech you not to provoke
them to violence."

Hodge, Horner, and Nollekens had rushed to the front,
where still better men were ready to vindicate the right of
public meeting, and their eyes met those of Jolly and Trus-
cott in an angry encounter not to be forgotten. The farm-
ers affected contempt.

"Oh, go on," said Jolly, "we'll not interrupt ee. This
ain't the place to discuss the question."

The Curate's hat went on, but he still stood between the
parties, while every one, trembling now with excitement,
turned again to the speaker.

" Well, the priests, who have been the witnesses of your
misery and need, have not helped you, and the masters
won't help you — {/fear, hear! said Hodge) — and the Parish
won't help you, leastways those of you that are honest, and

SAMMY STEDMAN.

the landlords won't help you, and even God won't help you
unless you help yourselves ; so you must resolve this day to
take your stand for what you mean to do. Quit yourselves
like fiteu, be strong. I tell you frankly this is no light or
easy matter. You may have to suffer a good deal. It will
be a hard fight, but it will be a glorious victory. Now, if
we are to combine to better our condition, what are we to
ask for?" . : v, -,

" More wages," grunted a lazy fellow in the bvickground,
whose pockets nursed his hands far more than was required
by the work they did. -

" Better houses," said a shrill voice not very far from the
speaker. It was that of Sally Nollekens. " Decent houses
an' a garden, master, an' twenty shillin' a wik, I say."

The crowd was easily amused. It laughed consumedly
at the good wife's proposal. The rustic simplicity, so fas-
cinating to amiable sentimentalists and poets, so advanta-
geous to employers, came out conspicuously when practical
Sammy Stedman asked them to formulate their demands.
They could not do it. Th(?y had only dipped their feet in
the edge of the water, and were not ready for a plunge.
They scarcely knew as yet whether to be in earnest or not,
though they meant to be terribly in earnest. They only felt
their state to be intolerable, and, in fact, I rather think,
shrank from the responsibility of suggesting their own
remedy. This shyness, the result of ignorance and long
repression, was afterwards used against them by their op-
ponents. They set down the whole movement to " agitators."
So long had they been under authority, coming and going.

I. ITTLF HODGE.

doing or refraining, at the behest of those with whom their
relations were in general kindly, that they would thank any
one, any Deus ex machind, who would come to them and
declare what were honest requirements and how to get
them. Sammy Stedman was the convenient divinity of the
moment. He pulled up Sally NoUekens.

" No, Mrs. NoUekens, 'twon't do to talk too large at first.
There ain't many farmers, farming as they do, as can afford
twenty shillings a week, and there ain't many men, as prices
go, worth twenty shillings. I don't go for all getting the
same price. We must help all up to a certain point, and
then above that it's the most to the best. Now, let's see.
You're most of you getting 9s. and los. a week and your
beer, I s'pose, which they reckon at ^\ 13s. 6d. a year,
and what they call * perquisites ' and Christmas gifts. Put-
ting all these together and considering the beer goes into
your stomachs, can you live fit to work and keep your
families decent and comfortable on what you get ? "

"Naw ! " came in a tremendous chorus from the audience.

" Then the least you can any of you ask is what' 11 do
that. You are part of the farmer's machinery, and you re-
quire to keep up steam or you'll run down, and you can't
work unless you have enough to keep the fire going, and
the water boiling, and the machinery oiled. That's the first
point — what they call a ininimtim. When you've got that
how much more are you entitled to?"

"Share o' profits," said two or three together, who had
followed his argument and [jerceived its drift.

"Yes. Some share big or little of the profits. I say

SAMMY STEDJVIAN.

you put your labor into the venture just as your master puts
his money into his land and his skill into his venture, and so
all that are in the venture should have a share in the profits
resulting from it."

O Sammy Stedman, Sammy Stedman, here are you trip-
ping sadly ! The selling price of a man's labor theoretically
includes not only what is to keep the machinery in order,
but the profits to him, whatever they n^ay be, over and
above the wages which the condition of the labor-market
enables him to earn. If that be so he must get his profits
out of his wages, and . no more entitled to a share of the
capitalist's profits than -to a room in the capitalist's house.
Is my green-grocer to turn upon me at Christmas for profits
on everything he has sold me, on the ground that he has all
the year been selling to me at a loss ? The selling price of
a cabbage includes the return for cost of producfion and the
profit. This latter proportion truly is very variable and
very doubtful in its collection, but, nevertheless, normally
and theoretically it forms some proportion of all wages and
all prices. *

Sammy Stedman's fallacy was a common one. It was,
however, the shadow or substitute for the truth. There is a
mediocre Siandard of labor which must be governed by the
rule above stated ; but undoubtedly there is also a sort and
style of work that involves something more than that. Put
a man on his mettle. Show him that he can do something
above a low average, can double production or improve
quality, and he does it for you. Is he then entitled to no
share of the profits? For in this case he brings into the

LITTLE HODGE.

combination to produce results an extra element, the only
one capable of expansion and intension, the capital and
ordinary labor being the fixed quantities, but this being an
elastic factor. Whether or no he be held entitled to a share
of the profits, surely in that case it would be good policy
and good economy to give it to him. The alternative is
that of paying for his extra skill and intensity a "fancy"
price, and running the risk upon that as well as on the
standard wage. However, if Sammy Stedman has got out
of his depth, the cue of all concerned is not to rail at him
and despitefuUy use him, but gently entreat him, for he is
an honest man and one waiting upon truth.
' I do not propose to report anymore of Stedman's speech.
He went into his " secondly," and showed them that indi-
vidually they could make no stand or head against the firm
phalanx of landlords' and employers' interests ; that here
and there some might receive attention and justice from
good-hearted employers, but that the only practical and
sure way of gaining equal ground with their masters in con-
tracting for wages was to unite and support each other, and
that a combination formed on principles of mutual aid, of
justice to themselves and justice to the farmers, would be
the foundation of a better edifice of life for them all.

The effect of all this on the hearers, who stood nearly
two hours patiently hearing it out, was very notable. It was
true, as one said who stood by and watched it, that you
could see the scales falling from their eyes. The men were
made new men. They had taken steps in thought and action.
Never again could they be the patient, acquiescent creat-

.JB^Jjgi;

SAMMY STEDMAN.

ures, whose docility was the admiration of sciolists, who
drew from it the conclusion that this uncommercial and
"almost family" relation was ordained of Heaven ! A res-
olution was arrived at to form a Union destined to be a dan-
gerous enemy to that other Coddleton Union, which had
hitherto ruled the district. It was then that the celebrated
"Coddleton Charter of Laborers' Rights" was drawn up;
and, lest it should be unknown to any of my readers, I
transcribe it in full : ..■■:' -y:,:,.'-,..-'^'--:--^-y''"'"" '

"IVef the undersigned laborers of Coddleton^ are of
J opinion that we are not treated as we ought to be
r . between man and man.

*'JVe therefore request to be treated otherwise.

" I. Our complaint is we must have better wages. We

are only getting from 9J. to lis. a week {some 8j.),

and such of us as has families hereby declare that

^ // is not possible to keep thefn on this sum per week,

; Moreoi'er^ we respeckfully submit wages is risen in

all departments but the agricultooral laborer. He

' is still a surf . : : V V '

"2. Our cottages — at least most of us — is not fit for
human beings to live in."

[A scene when this is under discussion ; Mrs. Nollckens,
with great vehemence, and no little plausibility, insisting
that a rider shall be added to this effect — "Speshully houses
on Cliarnley Farm, an' worst of all John Nollekens's, which
the size an' the rottenness of it is i)ast enduring." But the

LITTLE HODGE.

meeting persists in adhering to general statements, and
remits Mrs. Nollekens to her private remedy.] ' - ;>

(Continued.) '■''Furthermore^ the cottages is held by
the week of the farmers, who consequentially can
turn us out whenever they choose, and do so without
notice if so inclined. We therefore pray for cot-
tages of our own, near the farms, by the year, at a
reasonable rent, to be paid out of our wages,

" 3. Likewise there is many cases where the man has
no garden, and can^t grow any potatoes or vegeta-
bles. Jv all such cases we respeckfully beg that a
small piLce of land should be hired out to them^
or given with the cottage if convenient.

"4. Also there is cows. We think the father of a fam-
ily ought to be able to keep a cow a?id pervide milk
for his childern. This some gentlemen gives their
best men, and we request it will be allowed to all
such as have families. ^^

[The irrepressible Sally Nollekens heroically fights at this
juncture for the introduction of a claube in favor of pigs,
and gets some strong support ; but again the general ver-
dict is against her, leading to her declaration, amidst great
laughter, "That there paper's called a charier, but I calls un
a cheater. If zo be ee draws out a paper, draw it out
bravely, an' don't gi'e it em half an' half like. Lor* bless
the chicken hearts, if so be / could ha' wrote un, Fd a

SAMMY S T E D M A N

drawed a ch — ch — charter would a made the farmers sweat
in their shirts, I warrant un ! "] ; i, v

" 5. Our agreement is that wages shall be ids. In har-
vest, and 1^. through the winter. Also we will
. , not take less than t, pence the hour, or the equivalent,

for task work.

" 6. We hereby agree to form a Union for the above ob-
jects, and pledge ourselves to stand by each other
< //// 7ve succeed.'*

Such were the resolutions come to that May evening on
Hankerley Common — resolutions containing errors pro-
pounded with the quaintest naivete, pregnant, nevertheless,
with serious meanmg. The dread principle of Combination,
hitherto confined to towns, had burst its bounds, and for
good or evil inoculating the yokels, was destined thence-
forth to be a permanent power in country life. Who could
calculate or measure the results that would flow from this
portentous occurrence?

A levy of 3d. each upon all signers of the charter was
made for preliminary expenses, and a committee appointed,
with Sammy Stedman as chairman, to communicate with the
farmers. Finally, it was resolved that should they fail in
obtaining the advance of wages asked for they should strike.

Strike/ A word sending terror to the hearts of capital-
ists, harrowing landowners, employers, and consumers alike !
A word to make squires and farmers, thinking of their scat-
tered halls and farm-houses, their exposed ricks, their ranging
cattle and sheep, tremble with apprehension.

LITTLE HODGE.

The word Union was enough for them ! It transferred
them from the peaceful air of the country to the revolutionary-
atmosphere of the great towns. It brought before their eyes
visions of murdered masters, "rattened" machinery, burning
factories, tyrannical rules, truculent and disorderly meetings,
and, above all, the terrible powers of Strike. A word too
long associated with secret conspiracy and dark deeds of
violence, and malicious destruction, and harsh laws sternly
administered, and reprisals and animosities in what ought to
have been the holy brotherhood of Capital and Labor.
Everything evil that ever came out of or was attached to the
idea of Unions was conjured up to their imagination by the
word ; and to all this heritage of scandal and horror, without
the solemnity of any deed of transfer, succeeded the unfort-
unate Union that was born at Coddleton out of the exigen-
cies of Little Hodge. Very few stopped to inquire what
these men were really wanting, what they had really resolved
to do. In fact, the very terms were enough to damn the
whole proceeding. They asked more wages, they had drawn
up a Charter, they had formed a Union I they threatened
A STRIKE ! ! What more need be said ? This was the end
of social peace, a blow at the roots of society, the death-
warrant of the country. It was forgotten, naturally enough,
that the name " Union " no longer meant a secret conspiracy,
but an open combination, recognized and protected by law ;
that the reasons for the old acts of violence had vanished,
and that the occasional reappearance of truculent force in
certain localities was exceptional, and always reprehended
by the leaders of the best town Unions ; and above all, that

A CURIOUS DETHEL.

there were Unions and Unions ; that that which disfigured
the rules of the one was not to be found in another ; that
Unions need no more be copies of one another than all joint-
stock companies need engage in the same business or be
subject to the same rules. In failing to note this fact the
squirearchy and their tenants made their first trip in tactics,
and lost an opportunity, by early and conciliatory negotiation,
of giving to the Charter a shape harmonizing with the differ-
ent circumstances of rural life, and securing them from out-
bursts of unjust and angry caprice on the part of their labor-
ers. But the die was cast, and it was for Death to the
Union. The fatal results of this blunder we have yet to
trace.

But what if, after all, their real resentment arose more
from this, that the very mention of higher wages to men,
farming badly and overweighted with rent, and too often
living more like men of leisure and fortune than agriculturists,
was a strain too excessive for bucolic stoicism to endure ?

CHAPTER VI.

A CURIOUS BETHEL.

I HAVE not yet described Hodge's home. It was a cot-
tage which had the advantage of standing by itself at a cor-
ner of the farm near the road. It had no doubt been built
away from the other cottages on the farm in order that the
tenant should command the entrance to that part of it. It
had existed time whereof the memory of nan ran not to the

^^w

LITTLE HODGE

contrary. 'Twas a thick rubble-walled place, of a dingy
ochre tint, with a heavy thatch cap of great antiquity, and
small windows with leaden casements and diamond-shaped
panes. It stood in the garden of which a survey has already
been given. Inside, the floor was paved with uneven flags.
Ten feet by twelve was the dimensions of the room, the two
V xtra feet one way including the chimney-place : a low, un-
ceiled room that had once been whitewashed. The furni-
ture was a deal table, well scrubbed in Mrs. Hodge's days,
a swinging deal shelf, two or three fixed shelves, an old
bench, three chairs and a stool. Up on the high mantel-
board were three gaudily colored crockery figures — the Duke
of Wellington with :i red and green uniform, a ruby nose,
and cheeks of inebriated hue, supported by a blue and yel-
low lion startant — stare -ant on one side, and a sheep couch-
ant alb on a field gules and verdant on the other. The only
other ornament was an old almanac many a year since pasted
on the walls, and now exhibiting a dingy and fly-specked
face harmonizing with its background. There were two
brass candlesticks, one of which had bent beneath the weight
of time. Behind an old piece of baize were concealed the
family tea-cups and saucers. The rest of the family crockery
was easily accommodated on one of the fixed shelves afore-
said, and the family plate, consisting of an iron ladle and a
couple of metal teaspoons, reckless and fortuitous in its
habits, was always of uncertain locality. A door at the back
opened on a small bricked square, about four feet across,
from which covered stairs to the attic went up along the side
of the house. They had not far to go. The lower room

i-a

•■+

A CURIOUS BETHEL.

dingy
r, and
tiaped
I ready
flags,
le two
w, un-
furni-
5 days,
an old
uantel-
; Duke
y nose,
Lud yel-
couch-
10 only
pasted
pecked
re two
weight
led the
ockery
s afore-
and a
in its
c back
across,
he side
r room

was only eight feet high. The upper, with its sloping roof,
lighted by dormer-windows through the thatch, just permitted
Hodge to stand upright in its centre. Its contents were a
bed, rsT low wooden frame upholding a mattress, a settle in
under the eaves, and a loose mattress in the other corner.
The only carpet in the house, an old piece of felt, lay beside
the parental couch. I hope it will not be considered vulgar
to tell the tr-th that before and after Mra. Hodge's decease
Mary slept in the same bed with her father. Thank God,
they were simple folk !

Such was the house. Yet outside, with its deep, dark
thatch, small windows, and low elevation, it was very pic-
turesque, and any one passing by might have said that " it
was amazing to see the comfort and attractiveness of English
cottage life ; " for jessamine climbed over the remnants of
the rotted porch in front, honeysuckle wicathed the window,
and Mrs. Hodge had always maintained some annual
creepers ovcrmnning the back door and festooning the out-
side staircase. If comfort could have come out of aesthetic
gratification, possibly these poor people might have led a
tolerable life.

Ir this theatre of rural bliss, while the plot was thickening
for the formation of the Union and the declaration of rustic
rights, the starvation and distress of Hedge's family in-
creased in a geometric ratio. It had not taken m.my weeks
to bring the few weeds the poor dead woman had so aptly
managed in keeping her children decently clad, into a con-
dition to strike even Hodge's uninstructed eye. Whenever
Mary could get little Hodge's stomach and voice to come

-"W^P5j?g

LITTLE HODGE.

to a truce and be quiet, no easy task with the food the
child was dry-nursed upon, you might have seen her stand-
ing on a stool over the big half barrel that formed the
wash-tub, and plunging her small arms into the indifferently
lathered water in a womanly attempt to wpsh the family
linen, or sitting down with tlie paste-board b »x that had
long done duty as a work-basket, and with willing but in-
different stitches skewering together the disintegrating gar-
ment?, cf her brothers and sisters. Pale and dark undc. the
eyes, with whitening lip;:., the brave little womin sat and
faced with steady courage the growing horrors of her situa-
tion, and whiles she sang, and whiles she cheered the others
v.'ith her mother-like trl^ and whiles she encouraged them
to go and gather sticks in the coppice for the morning fire.
Then sometimes, when she was left alone, you might
have seen her l\y her weary, troubled lif'o head on the
table-edge, and weep over the memory of her mother dead
and her own living experience of sorrow and care.

Little Hodge grew daily more sickly and troublesome.
Mary had twice or thrice obtained medicine from the dis-
pensary for him, but peppermint drops were a poor stimu-
lant or sedative for his complaint. He wanted milk and
food. She had discovered it was now impossible any longer
to conceal the other children's necessities from their father.
They must either have some more cloliies or go to bed,
said Mrs. Nollekens. The poor nan himself had once or
twice thoughtlessly remarked on their raggedness, and re-
proached the child by recalling their appearance under her
mother's hands. How little had he estimated what that im-

A CURIOUS BETHEL.

food the
ler stand-
)rmed the
differently
the family
^. that had
ig but in-
rating gar-
. unde.- the
in sat and
f her situa-

the others
raged them
orning fire,
you might
?ad on the
other dead

oublesome.
)m the dis-
)oor stimu-
1 milk and
any longer
Lhcir father,
go to bed,
ad once or
•ss, and re-
• under her
lat that im-

plied when the poor woman was living ! How many hus-
ban(]s ever do? .

Hodge had come home, and was sitting waiting for sup-
per. There was part of a great brown loaf on the table,
and Tummas had picked a few watercresses, which with
some salt completed the set-out. Tea was brewing on the
hearth : one teaspoonful of village tea to the quantity of
water a man could drink after a day's work. But he bad
had his beer. Little Hodge lay in the well-used box, the
cradle of the Hodge family.

" Fayther," Mary said, as she sat and watched him eating
the meal, "what's to become o' we, fayther?"

Hodge stopped, with a large piece of bread and a bunch
of watercresses between his teeth, quite aghast that Mary
should have hit upon the very question that was the burden
of his thoughts morning, noon, and night.

"Ay, Mary," he said presently, "what's to become o' we,
Mary? God knows— /don't."

"Fayther," she said, painfully, "I've a done all I can to
save, and the money's all gone, and four shillin' owin' to the
baker, and the dairyman to Charnley told Tummas he
couldn't let him have any more milk without the cop-
pers. And, fayther, there's scarcely any clothes left to we
childern, and indeed, fayther, 'tain't my fault, but every-
thing's a wearing out, and there be need o' a rare lot o*
money to get 'em all new clothes. I've mugglcd along, but
'taint no use to try to mend 'em any more." And so Mary
broke down and wept, and Hodge's grim face grew more
grim and strange as he sat and looked at her.

■'*;■> :-r:^'

LITTLE HODGE.

"God help us!" he said; "I can't a bear it much
longer."

" Here's poor little Ben, fayther, Y.Sve scarcely took a
thing for more'n two days. He cried hisself to sleep.
Look at him." She uncovered the tiny face. " He's amost
like a corpse, fayther, hain't he?"

"Ha!" replied the father, with a long, deep-drawn sigh,
"poor little Ben ! And 'tis all along o' he we be so
trubbled. Us could a spared him, Mary, without missing
him, if the Lord had so a willed."

" O naw, fayther," and Mary's arms went ' ound the child,
as its dying mother's had done, with affectionate energy,
"I couldn't a spared him, fayther — sh — sh — sh ! — naw, nor
I wouldn't a spared him ^/len. There, there — sh — sh — sh ! "
And so Hodge got up and went out, leaving Mary to quiet
the embarrassing youngling.

When, an hour later, he returned, Mary had gone to bed.
As he lit the remains of the candle and it flickered up over
his face, once so cleanly shaven, now bristling with the
careless growth, it showed an odd light in his eyes. He
moved about and made some dispositions in the room. He
took off his boots and went upstairs, and out of the chest
selected a few things which he brought down and made into
a bundle. Then, stretching hiinself on the floor, with his
bead on the bundle and his coat over him, he went to sleep.

As the St reafts of morning began to brighten into a fan of
long light shatk^ upon the eastern sky, the man, rising from
his hard bed, donned his coat ai ' ''j*'c'''*'f. He then
counted the money in his pocket, arjriAntii'i'j ic 'vo shilHngs-

A CURIOUS BETHEL.

and ninepence, wrapping halt of it in a piece of paper which
he laid on the table, and retaining half for his own use.
He laid some wood for a fire, and brought in some water.
Near the money on the table he put a knife and a carrot or
two he had brought home the night before, so that Mary
might find them ready for the morning meal. His bundle
was on the table beside his stick and hat, his large clogs
were placed opposite a chair ready to be put on at the last
moment, whei Hodge stole upstairs to take a farewell look
at his children. Here were Tummas, and Sally, and Ned,
and Jack, all mingled together in glorious confusion in the
corner ; there were the others on the settle, and he kissed
them every one. Lastly he looked at Mary, who lay with
his latest diminutive item of despair asleep on her arm. At
her he looked with fast-gathering tears.

"God bless ee, Mary dear. How like she look to her
mother. God knows it cuts my heart, Mary, to turn my
back on ee and leave ee and all the rest — it do, it do ! But
I can't help *em; how can I ? There, if I goes, the Parish'U
take care of 'em, and maybe eddicate 'em, and give 'em a
start in ' -^ ./or]-!; but for my part, what can I do fur 'em
but starve 'em ? ' >

He bent over the sleeping girl.

" Mary," said he, " good by. It pricks I terrible to leave
ee, Mary," and a drop from his eye fell on her cheek. It
disturbed her. She half opened her eyes, but .she was
heavy with weariness and turned away her head again, un-
conscious that she had received a parting tribute of her
foither's love. "

saas

^ -mir

LITTLE HODGE.

Then John Hodge stood up with his head touching the
rafter, and said, solemnly :

"If so be Godamitey do bless I where I'm a goin' in
furrin' parts, an'll give I good wages, and such a living as'U
suffice to keep us ail comfortable in Canady, I'll send home
for ee all ; I will, so help me God ! " said John Hodge,
adopting a court phrase.

And then, with no ascending or descending angels visible
to him, no voice of Bethel ringing in his ears, he went down
the stairs, and, how he knew not, laced up the huge clogs,
seized the stick and bundle, and, driving his old felt hat
down tightly over iiis brow, turned his back on his home,
his children, his parish, his parson, his master, the Guar-
dians, and the British Poor-law.

• ••••-••

The execrable cowardice of this man makes my heart
bleed. I find in him many of the best elements of human
nature ; sacrifice, faithfulness through long and frequent
trials to a first love and to love's progeny; tenderness of
heart; a gentleness that testified itself in rarely-forgetful
acts of home courtesy ; a homely and simple piety, of a sort
that recognized God, though in a puzzled way to account
for the consistency of that belief with the facts of his own
daily experience ; a man who never wronged a neighbor,
never quarrelled, never defrauded his master of anything
but an hour's work on some sleepy day when his eye was
oft' him: this was the recreant, tursid craven who, on a May
morning, basely deserted, and left upon the Guardians and
ratepayers oi Coddleton Union, eleven children, including
Little Hodge.

PART III.

UNION AND DISUNION.

CHAPTER I.

THE TOURNAMENT OF CAPITAL AND LABOR.

While Hodge was thus blindly seeking to cut for himself
the knot of fate, the event whereof he and his offspring had
been the prompting cause began to be blown about and
to create an excitement through the whole country. To
half the hearers it was a portent of terror and evil ; to others
it was glad tidings of the salvation of a hitherto hopeless
class. Philanthropists, sentimentalists, sociologists, ay, and
socialists : Radicals, Nonconformists, Chartists, advocates of
women's rights, the anti-Game-law people. Trades-unionists,
social and political sciolists — it must, for the sake of truth,
be confcE*;ed that some, or all of these did forthwith effer-
vesce in sympathy for Hodge, whose stoiy, in every style
of newspaper English, from the vivid and graphic periods of
the greatest of war correspondents to the crude simplicities
of country reporters, was expanded in columns of type,
bought and read with avidity on every hand. Is there any
incident — religious, horrible, profane, or pathetic — out of
which in these ingenious days no one can make any capi-
lii? The voice of the Hankerley laborers wet: into many

■»■"▼• ■"^'--

LITTLE HODGE,

hearts. And when raging editors boiled over with vicarious
indignation for their bucolic patrons, and landowners palpi-
tated in the face of this new upheaval, one and all neverthe-
less admitted that much was to be said and much to be
done for the tillers of the soil. But, what it was clear to
these persons in their fury, and whs.t above all they pro-
tested was what ought not to be done, was this : to disturb
the genial quiet, the gentle harmony of country associations
by irruptions of Trades-unionism — to inoculate Hodge,
Styles, and Nollekens with the doctrines of economy.
These were the peculiar heritage of the cities. For, it was
asserted, the relations of employers and laborers in the
country were the growth of grateful centuries, and ordained
of Heaven ; a relation of patriarchal form and simplicity , a
sacred combination wherein to push the rude car of com-
mercial principles was to break a circle of organized affec-
tions and destroy the arrangements of Providence. These
arguments appeared in print.

Certainly there was much to account for this hysterical
rhetoric. Had not the Trades-unions in the towns at once
passed resolutions of sympathy, and poured their brotherly
gifts into the treasury of the infant combination ? Did not
social sciolists precipitate themselves upon Hankerley, each
with a separate nostmm for the bewildered rustics ? Had
they not already been asked to look forward to the separa-
tion of Church and State, the alteration of the county fran-
• l^ise, and the re-distribution of seats? Had not Radi-
cal associations sent resolutions of congratulation and
opened subscription-lists? Had not the Land League

'■*n^~-'''jw?fiiP'

TOURNAMENT OF CAPITAL AND LABOR. 8l

— omen monstroswn I — recognized the movement as a
step in the right direction? AVere not "epileptic M.P.'s"
and officious pamphleteers, "eager for notoriety," and
"moved by a pure spirit of mischief," rushing to the scene
of action and venting their crude platitudes upon the hapless
hinds? In fact, were not the whole of that numberless,
aimless, irrepressible, fidgety, bothersome, dangerous set of
people which can be classed under the name of agitators
converging on Hankerley, and d ncing their demonstrative
fandangoes before all the word, in scandalous delight at the
mischief that was brewing ? If the movement had been a
bad one it had been certainly damned by its friends.

But it was little wonder if all this happened ! No marvel
if, besides all this, in many a quiet home in England gentle
hearts beat with excitement, and generous souls quickened
into sympathy that the day of the laborers' resurrection had
come ; for it was natural to such souls to rejoice when they
heard, " Thy brother was dead and is alive again : he was lost
and is found." It was the rich elder brother who grudged
the joy. From a death worse than death, the inertness and
ineptitude of ignorant content, Hodge had wakened to life,
and his class with him. How it fared with Hodge himself,
we shall see : how it fared with Hodge's work only the
Book of Time and the Apocalypse of Eternity will show.

The I-aborers' Charter was printed, and a copy served on
each of the fanners within the limits of the Coddleton dis-
trict. At the same time a notice was given that the rate
of wages stated in the Charter would be insisted upon.

Afost of the farmers were inclined to receive this news as a
6

i!'

LITTLE HODGE.

joke, but those who had attended the Hankerley meeting
soon undeceived them. Jolly, Truscott, and their com-
panions had that evening assured themselves that the men
were in earnest, though they were certain that the move-
ment had no backbone. At the end of a week, by arrange-
ment, all the laborers in Hankerley took their week's waL!;es
and left their work. The farmer who got up early on Mon-
day morning in faith that it was a joke was himself cmelly
hoaxed. Horses, hoes, harrows, hedge -clips, or what not,
rested from their labors, and not a man was to be seen. In
twenty-four hours a meeting of employers was called.
Squire Byrton took the chair. He was supported by many
neighboring landowners, by Mr. Leicester and the incum-
bents of two other parishes. Sammy Stedman laughed
when he read this in the County Chronicle. The parsons
were playing into his hands. If at this meeting there was
more heat than argument, it should not be reflected upon.
It was natural. Time must needs elapse and the movement
grow stronger before the interest so weakly attacked would
bring itself to attempt to formulate a defence. It was sim-
ply considered and resolved that the mere notion of a strike
in the county was unendurable ; that those present would
to a man " resist the introduction into the agricultural sys-
tem of that principle of Unionism which had been the curse
of the country, setting class against class, and destroying
those happy relations which ought to exist between em-
ployers and employed." I quote the words of Mr. Leices-
ter. They were reiterated by the chairman, they were
cheered by the meeting. Two or three gentlemen admitted

TOURNAMENT OF CAPITA T, AND LABOR. 83

that wages were too low and ought to be increased ; but as
a preliminary to the performance of their duty in this re-
spect, the farmers resolved to repudiate the organization
which had opened their eyes to a fact they had before
refused to recognize. Notably, Mr. Jolly, wlio would not
hearken to John Hodge's appeal for better pay, now sug-
gested that it would be a wise policy to raise the wages
of non-Unionists. Every one agreed that Unionists must
be "locked out," and Squire Byrton announced his inten-
tion of evicting any Unionist who tenanted his cottages.

— Thus the social war was declared. The gauntlet thrown
down on one side was taken up by the other, and each party
set lance in rest for the coming fray. The trumpets were
blown by the heralds of the Press, while an excited crowd
of spectators cheered and counter-cheered the barbarous
spectacle. In this way, O Christ-regenerated England !
heir to nineteen centuries of Christian love, does the awful
tournament of Labor and Capital itill join its deadly issues
before most Christian sovereigns and a most Christian
people ! ' ' ' .-"r

The effect of the masters' challenge was to arouse pre-
cisely that spirit of resentment which could alone give
strength to the weaker hinds. They received the notices of
eviction with stolidity. Many who had not joined the
movement now attached themselves to it: they completed
their organization : Sammy Stedman became Chairman,
Jack Horner the Secretary. Labor all over the country
was in a ferment ; the agricultural districts seethed with an
excitement which threatened to spread into every county.

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(7|«) •7a-4»03

LITTLE HODGE.

At the suggestion of some Metropolitan Unionists a singu-
lar course was resolved upon. It was agreed that the battle
should be fought out within the limits of Coddlcton district.
A general understanding was arrived at that not a single
laborer should pass the bounds into the district to help the
farmers, so that the latter might be left to solve their diffi-
culties with the labor that faced them. At present they felt
pretty strong. The May blossoms were yet upon the
hedges, their seed was in the ground, and they could for a
few weeks afford to go short-handed. By the time they
were ready for the men they had no doubt the latter would
come in. The story of this great representative struggle I
now propose to write. .

.-;-. .,■■- ■ .i,^'' ..-,'; * * ■■:'■. '" "- - ■.''■, I '--■' ■'
CHAPTER II.

AN INARGUABLE CASE.

Of all the men to whom the Laborers' Charter had given
offence, Squire Byiton v/as the most offended. Manly>
generous, open-hearted, with an afiection for a servant that
obeyed, and a contempt for servility in a gentleman ; with a
high reverence for the Church, and utter detestation of the
obscure sects which spring like mushrooms under its great
Gothic shadow ; with a supreme admiration fcr the estab-
lished order of things, and an ineffable scorn for those who
would disturb that sacred stability; putting Radicals, Infi-
dels, Trade-unionists, and Nonconformists In the same pot
of wrath for a day of wrath — 'twas no wonder that the bile

il!

AN IN ARGUABLE CASE.

was stirred within him by this atrocious outbreak of all the
obnoxious powers in sight of the windows of his ancestral
home.

When he returned from the meeting at Coddleton his dis-
composure was visible to his family. A large and squirely
family was Mr. Byrton's. The noble-looking dame at the
end of the table ; the fair-faced, clear-eyed, cherry-lipped
girl at his side, with her golden-rippling tresses, his own
image and eldest born : the two ruddy sisters, with their
mother's brown hair and eyes ; the younger boys, sunburned
and healthy, down to wee Caroline, the flaxen-curled pet of
the household — the Squire could look round proudly and
look forward hopefully at his family board.

Emily was a woman, now one and-twenty, slender, and
straight, and tall, and crested as a graceful palm-tree. What
wonder that her beauty and grace had won the heart of
Henry Ewbank, Esquire, Barrister-at-Law, a man on the
Western Circuit, son of Sir Henry Ewbank, of Ewbank, not
ten miles away from Byrton Hall? And what wonder that
he, a fine young Englishman, wich a plain open face, a noble
brow, a manly character, and gieat natural parts, should
have attracted the affections of the somev»hat secluded girl ?
Young Ewbank came out a good fourth at Cambridge, and
relinquishing the sports of the country and the miserable oc-
cupation of waiting for the death of a father whom he wished
not to die, took to the Bar, where he was not without hope
of success. Sir Henry and Mr. Byrton were of the same
politics and fast County friends. The latter looked with sat"
isfaction upon the projected alliance with the Ibionct's fam-

LITTLE HODGE

11:

ily. There was only one drawback. The young man " had
notioiis." He took his father's name with pride, but held
his father's politics in derision. In religion and politics he
thought for himself, and without the prejudices of his caste.
In fact, the Squire twitted his daughter with her engagement
to a "Radical." Emily Byrton bore it very calmly. To
tell the truth she had used her leisure and an active mind to
some purpose, and was not by any means one of the doU-
lik * creatures which modern sociology depicts as an object
of reform. Henry Ewbank was delighted with the freshness
and earnestness of her thoughts ; but he was a prejudiced
v/itness, let us not (serrate her.

iVhen the Squire came home from the meeting, and, after
dressing in considerable heat, sat down at his table with his
face in an apoplectic state of indignation, Emily ought to
have permitted him to discharge his indignation unhindered.
But mischief was in her eyes and looks when she saw her
father's embarrassment, and there was a sympathy in her
heart she could not perhaps have suppressed.

'•'■ ForwhatweareabouttoreceivetheLordmakeustrulyihankful^^
said the Squire, as if he were angry with the Almighty and
meant to pay Him oft* by a suiky grace.

" Well, papa, how did you get on at your meeting ? "

'* Oh ! capitally — quite unanimous. We have decided on
action that is sure to bring these poor fools to their senses."

" Are you going to imprison them ? "

" No ; I wish we could," said the Squire. " If it hadn't
been for those cowardly Radicals we should have had the

AN INARGUABLE CASE.

Combination Laws to use in such a case as this. There
never was a wickeder conspiracy."

" Do you really think there was a conspiracy, or don't you
think that these poor men are really underpaid and have
been forced to this of themselves ? You know Henry goes
about talking to them when he is down here, and he told me
they were wretchedly underpaid. He is trying to get his fa-
ther to move in the matter."

" Oh ! He goes about talking to them, does he ? Well,
that accounts for it. We have 'viewed' the original con-
spirator," said the Squire, with a grave face.

" But he did not put any ideas into their heads, you know.
He only asked questions ; b^jcause he told me he did not
like to raise hopes that seemed to him in their present con-
dition to be impossible of attainment."

"Their 'present condition,' eh? What the deuce does
he know about their ' present condition ' ? Sweating math-
ematics and digging into law-books — he's out of the coun-
try altogether."

" Yes ; but, papa, he really does know a great deal about
it. He has studied all sorts of questions — land-tenure, ten-
ancy, rotation of crops, and political economy— you know."

"Thank Heaven, I don't know! Political economy, in-
deed ! It was expressly invented for the benefit of the Rad-
ical party. It has nearly ruined England. What ground
has political economy tc int' rfcre with a system which has
existed for generations and hab worked so well ? Wliy, we
have hitherto been congratulating ourselves in the country
that we were exempt from the evils of that cursed town

^sii^apspK-=^i

LITTLE HODGE.

Unionism, and here, by — by Jove ! it has broken out, of all
places in the world, in my parish ! Never mind, we'll scotch
the snake."

"But after all, in your heart, dear papa, don't you think
there is something to be said for it? I don't profess to
know, but Henry says — "

" I don't want to know what Henry says. The case is in-
arguable. In fact, I'll tell you what, my dear, if Henry Ew-
bank comes here instructing you in Radical and revolution-
ary principles, I'll — "

" Hush ! " cried Emily, putting her hand on his mouth,

" Horsewhip him ! " said the Squire, when he could

draw away the pretty teasing fingers.

Whereat Ennly laughed, and then the Squire laughed ;
and so the disagreeable subject went by. Emily had re-
ceived a letter by the afternoon post announcing her lover's
arrival on the next day from the Circuit town, but just then
she discreetly said nothing about it

CHAPTER III.

THE MUSHROOM HAT ON ITS DEFENCE.

Mr. Leicester went heartily with the Squire and the
neighboring gentry. His associations, instincts, and educa-
tion made tl>is natural. Though he would on behalf of the
Church Missionary Society have preached with fervor from
the text " 6"^^/ — hath made of one blood all nations oj meity*
he could not help making, in feeling and in practice, an in-

THE MUSHROOM HAT ON ITS DEFENCE. 89

sensible exception from this doctrine in favor of the English
aristocracy. His sympathies would have gone down to the
laborers in many acts of kindness : they never went out to
them on the level of human and Christian brotherhood.
How different is the benevolence of patronage from the fra-
ternity of genuine charity I

The Vicar thought it his duty to preach a sermon to his
parishioners on the topic^ — '■'■And having food and raiment,
let us be therewith content." It rather missed its aim, since
those for whom it was meant were scantily represented in
the free seats, but it pleased the squirearchy and the farmers
who formed the congregation. They found their own ideas
expressed in good English, and backed up by the authority
of the Church. But there was one fly in the ointment — that
was the Curate. His conduct at the meeting had much
outraged the tender sensibilities of the Hankerley farmers,
and became the subject of remark from Mr. Byrton to his
friend. What was to become of the country, what was to
become of society, what was to become of them, if the revo-
lutionary projects of socialists were to be defended or even
winked at by the clergy? Outside the parish there were
two opinions about Mr. Linkbo/s conduct. Some of the
clerical newspapers employed the choicest epithets to
characterize his interference ; others of his own color seemed
inclined to vindicate him. In the journals of heretic Radi-
calism however the High Church Curate for once received
applause, Mr. Leicester deemed it his duty to reprehend
the young man's boldness.

" My dear sir," he argued, " there are many points about

■pi

LITTLE HODGE.

which you and I are very seriously at variance, but which I
am content to overlook because of my general approval of
your zeal and sincerity. So long as these are mere matters
of conscience, and do not bring the Church into collision
with the society that surrounds it, I can afford to overlook
them. But if you step beyond this to interfere in a purely
social contention, or throw the influence you have as a
minister of the Church into one scale or the other, you ex-
ceed your duty and place both yourself and me in a very
embarrassing position."

" I am sorry, sir," replied Mr. Linkboy, " to hear you
seem to admit that the office of peacemaker is departed
from Christ's ministry. Has the time gone by when we shall
be called the children of God? The people who have been
complaining of me must be infatuated bigots on their side of
the question, for I did not interfere in favor of either party.
I interposed when there was danger of a collision. I believe
your own generous spirit would have led you to do the same
if you had been there."

The Vicar winced. He was the very man to have done
what he felt himself now obliged to condemn. For that
reason he was harder on the fault. He began —

"We have nothing to do with this matter — "

" Pardon me, sir," said the Curate, " I seriously dispute
that. I think we have a clear duty in this matter. I have
satisfied myself in many visits, not always accepted with the
cordiality I should have wished, that the condition of these
agricultural laborers is a shame to the land they live in."

" Yes, that is obvious to us all ; but I must take leave to

THE MUSHROOM HAT ON ITS DEFENCE. 9I

=j«r

say that undue sympathy is more sentimental than practical.
The condition of the laborer is due to circumstances we can
neither control nor affect. We can only mitigate it by
charity and proper administration of the Poor-law. The
age resents the interference of enthusiasts in affairs purely
economic. Our mission as Christian ministers is not to re-
dress civil and social wrongs by political action. We must
be content to spread the leaven of the principles of Christ."

" But not to show their practical application ? " said Mr.
Linkboy, warmly. " Oh, sir, I cannot so read my duty.
Conscience carries me beyond that."

" I do not wish to fetter your liberty of conscience in any
way, Mr. Linkboy," replied the Vicar ; " but I see so much
danger in the kindly, though mistaken views you hold on
this question, that I am really forced to speak very plainly,
and to say that I cannot assent to your taking any further
part in this serious quarrel. Great as is my regard for you,
any further manifestation of the sympathies which I now see
clearly you entertain must lead to consequences painful to
both of us. You will place the Church in the false position
of being opposed to the harmony of classes and the estab-
lished order of things."

" A false position, sir ? " cried Mr. Linkboy, with indis-
creet animation. " The Church and the world are natural
antagonists. What if the harmony of classes be the still
monotony of death, and the established order of things the
mere permanence of oppression and wrong ? The kingdom
of peace came also not to bring peace but a sword —it has
no truce with wrong, and sin, and evil-doing, and fraud."

"Vts^'

LITTLE HODGE.

" My young friend," said Mr. Leicester, sincerely, " let
me caution you against generalities. They dejitroy many
a man's balance of mind and impair his usefuln(;ss. They
are so plausible and often so inapplicable. Christ never
came to set class against class."

With this triumphant generality Mr. Leicester brought
the interview to a close.

CHAPTER IV.

A NOAH'S dove.

When, on the morning of Hodge's flight, Mary awoke,
she wondered why her father had left his bed so early.
Then, having looked out of the window and seen how far
the sun had come up the eastern sky, she became frightened
to find that she had overslept herself After dressing two or
three of the younger fry, leaving the rest to scramble into
their clothes as best they could, she came downstairs with
Little Hodge. The dispositions her father had made struck
her with some surprise. She guessed from these that he
had gone for the day. Not only that ; this unusual atten-
tion and the small packet of money suggested the fear that
his absence must have something to do with the conversa-
tion of last night ; but she cheered herself with the thought
that he might have gone somewhere to seek better wages or
to get some assistance. The long day passed, while she
swept, and scrubbed, and washed, and patched away ; and
out of the money on the table Tummas was able to get the

A noah's dove.

baby some good milk, so that the household was not so cast
down with the loss of its head as might have been expected.
In the afternoon Mrs. Nollekens came in with something in
her hand for Little Hodge, ready to give an hour's assistance
to Mary in reviewing the remnants of the children's clothing.
Her verdict was decisive.

" They bain't fit for gypsies and vagabones, let alone a
decent family."

*' Fayther do say he can't afford to get we any more.
He do feel it terrible. He went away afore daylight without
his breakfast. Do ee think, Missus Nollekens, as he have
no noshuns about hisself?"

Mrs. Nollekens on this information shrewdly cross-ques-
tioned Mary, and, though she kept it to herself, suspected
the truth. She put it to her own mind that it was exactly
the course that coward Tim Nollekens would have pursued.
Her heart smote her, too, for the terrible suggestion she
had made to Hodge flashed across her mind and made her
uneasy. She stayed, however, as long as she could, comb-
ing out the hair of all the children with a vigor and con-
scientiousness that they never forgot, and left the whole
family improved and brightened by her visit.

That night Mary remained up a long time after the others
had gone to bed. Through the long, quiet gloaming of the
fast-coming summer, far into the darkness, she sat listening
for her father's step. He did not come. She carried the
baby upstairs and lay awake on the bed. In the terrible,
protracted silence it seemed as if she could hear a great
pulse throbbing in her ears ; but no sound disturbed her,

LITTLE HODGE.

and by and by she fell asleep. In her uneasy dreams now
and then she cried out, " Fayther ! Fayther ! " but the dark-
ness gave no answer. Morning came, and sunlight, and
the opening of the balm-breathing lips of waking summer,
but her eyes did not rest on the familiar form heavy with
sleep.

So that day passed, and the next, and the next, and
Mary and the neighbors became seriously alarmed. Nolle-
kens turned round on his wife rather sharply.

" Ay ! ee were too cruel to him ! Do ee recklect how ee
told him to cut his throat ? Maybe he've a gone and done
it. Thoe'lt have him laid to thy chairge."

Mrs. Nollekens gave the best proof of her remorse by
holding her tongue.

On the third day the news had spread that John Hodge
had disappeared. Mr. Jolly made inquiries, and sent for
the relieving-officer. By this time Mary was in great dis-
tress. The scrap of paper now covered only a few half-
pence, and the clothes problem had ceased to have some of
its terms. On the fourth day the relieving-officer came and
examined Mary. He was not consoled. Eleven children
were thrown on the parish as clear ai daylight. They were
destitute of food and clothing, and must be taken into the
workhouse. The Union Committee of the laborers how-
ever, scanty as were their funds, resolved to take charge of
Mary and Little Hodge, and Mrs. Nollekens received them
into her house. The rest were removed to the Union,
^feantime a large placard was posted about the country
offering a reward for John Hodge's apprehension. It was

A NOAII'S DOVE.

in characters large enough for the hue and cry after a mur-
derer. There was Scripture text for treating the fugitive as
worse than an infidel. Mr. Mce procured a warrant from a
justice, no other than the Vicar of Hankerley, to arrest
Hodge as " a rogue and vagabond," and this having been
duly backed, a parish constable was sent off to other coun-
ties in search of him.

As for Hodge, his ideas in levanting had been very hazy.
All earthly means failing him, I, who know of his narrow
education and as narrow experience, cannot condemn him
for his distnist of Providence. Providence is a Deity more
preached about than believed in through the country dis-
tricts, where, with ample spiritual teaching in theory, there
is a great deal of practical infidelity. This poor man's ap-
peal to Providence to bless him in the act of running away
from his family, was a curious display of the mistiness of his
mind about the God he confessed : a notable commentary
on the beautiful adaptability of an Established Church to the
spiritual requirements of the age.

His immediate intentions in getting away were to make
for a seaport town, whence he fondly imagined he could get
translated to Canada. There was a tradition in Hankerley
of a former Hankerley man who, emigrating to Canada, had
made a fortune ; and this local historic tale so strongly laying
hold of the fancies of the unlettered people among whom it
floated, was a proof of the power that might be brought to
bear upon the imaginations of our rural communities, were
there an official class capable of apprehending its issues and
willing to avail themselves of its aid. This then was the

LITTLE HODGE.

vague idea with which Hodge started. Two or three days'
walking with inquiries of the way to London — which he
believed to be the nearest seaport town — brought him up
with a grinri question : How vas he to live till he got there ?
Here and there kindly folk, answering the queries of the sad-
looking man, gave him help along with information ; but
every day seemed to make his course more hopeless.
Reaching ot length a county town, and passing wearily and
hungrily along its main str( ct, he might, among the won-
drous sights he saw, have read on the police-board outside
the town-hall the proclamation for his own arrest. But he
could not read. As it was, his attention was called to it by
a familiar voice, while a hand was laid on his shoulder ami
Philip Nokes, the constable at Hankerley, claimed him for
his prisoner. Hodge was so beaten and broken-down that
he never said a word, and went with the man like a child.
Philip did not reproach him ; he only told him he was sorry
he was obliged to take him back. And so in silence the
two returned to Hankerley, where Hodge was secured in the
lockup.

CHAPTER V.

A UKASE ON BRITISH SOIL.

Emily's lover arrived at P>yrton Hall, to meet a welcome
from old and young, excepting the Squire, who would at this
juncture rather not have had the Tactious young Radical
about him. Mr. Byrton felt himself nervous and irritable,

-«i^i(p-i

A UKASE ON BRITISH SOIL.

and doubted his own ability to support even the presence of
any one not sympathizing with his views and designs.

He had caused his steward to issue a notice to the tenants
and laborers on his estate declaring his hostility to the Union,
and stating that he, as the feudal lord of the district, " felt
a heavy responsibility with regard to the !iature of the rela-
ticns existing between the people on his estates." He had
" v/bserved with pain that the cordiality and goodwill which
ought to exist between the laborers and bis tenants was in
danger of being broken by the interference of meddlesome
agitators," whose hostility to the Throne, Church, and Con-
stitution needed no proof " Under (sk) these circumstances,
T feel myself compelled to take such steps as shall tend to
ensure to the farmer on the one hand immunity from the
dangerous practices of improper combination, and the la-
borer on the other hand from the irterestv.d schemes of Com-
munists, Internationalists, and agitators. With the view of
. securing these things, I have caused notices to be served on
all those laborers who hold cottages or allotments directly
from mc that their joining tne Union will lead to their evic-
tion, and I invite such of my tenants as have control of the
cottages on their faniis to co-operate with mc in enforcing
this rule. In this way alone can be secured a supply of effec-
tive labor without ruin to the farmer, nnd v/ithout embar-
rassing the kindly relations that have always existed, by the
introduction of principles subversive of social order and
economy."

Young Ewbank read this paper with amazement and
chagrin. It was not merely the bad English that he dcpre

LITTLE HODGE.

cated. He implored his prospective father-in-law to recall
it, but received for his j^ains a sound rating. As his own
father joined the Squire in his proceedings, an appeal to him
was useless. He contented himself with visiting the cot-
tagers, urging them to be moderate in their demands, to
avoid the pitfalls of Unionism, and to adhere to their present
programn.i. By this time a large sum of money was in the
hands of the Committee, and they were able to keep in tol-
erable comfort all those who were on strike. Moreover the
Squire and his coadjutors were mortified to find that, angry
as the farmers were, some were not disposed to ruin them-
selves for the sake of a principle, and that in a week or two
they were beginning to pick up Union men at advanced
wages to save their crops from disaster. You may appeal to
men's selfishness to act with you up to the point at which
they have a hope or a certainty of profiting by the co-oper-
ation ; but let a stronger appeal be made to the same point
from another quarter, and they are likely to discard princi-
ples and leave you in the lurch.

♦

CHAPTER VI.

justices' justice and statutes at large.

Hodge was brought up at a Petty Sessions. The Justi-
ces were no other than the Vicar and the Squire. In rural
life society interlocks and overlaps in an amazing way. One
justice who is a brewer applies for the licenses of his public-
houses to brother justices, who may be connected with him

justices' justice, etc.

by marriage or may regularly hunt the country with him. A
tenant may prosecute a laborer before their common land-
lord. In the present instance two ex-officio Guardians were
sitting as judges in a case wherein the Board of Guardians
was interested. This was in strict accordance with an Act
of Parliament. Hodge did not detect the anomaly. He
had for all his life seen these gentlemen adjudicating on
everything that concerned his class. If they had ordered
him to be hanged he would scarcely have questioned their
authority.

He stood up in the Court-room, a grimy man, with his
head bent, his eyes red and watery, his hair tossed, his feat-
ures drawn together in exquisite pain — a pain to look at !
— a crestfallen-looking knave enough. The Squire's respect-
able, healthy face looked like a rouged Si)hynx, he had fixed
his features in so hard a cast. Mr. Leicester's teeth no lon-
ger shone benignly towards his parishioner, but were shut
in by indignant lips. The gentlemen thought that the man
had been guilty of one of the most unmanly acts whereof an
Englishman could be accused, and regarded him with as
much sternness as they would have felt towards a poacher
— and that is saymg a good deal.

However they spoke in gentle, quiet tones.

When Hodge looked round the Court his ey fell on Mrs.
Nollekens and Mary, the latter carrying Liitle Ben in her
arms. He averted his glance and bent down his head still
deeper. He did not notice a young gentleman who sat near
the dock, in a place devoted to legal personages, and who

lOO

LITTLE HODGE.

seemed very uneasy. Henry Evvbank was fidgeting about
on his seat in a way that attracted the Squire's attention.

Mr. Mee and the relieving-officer appeared. They testi-
fied to the fact that the children had been found in a
shocking state of destitution, almost without clothes, hungry
as sparrows, and apparently quite neglected. In the course
of the somewhat desultory evidence given on these points
the Squire asked the relieving-officer —

" Is it supposed that the prisoner drank ? "

"Well, sir, he've generally had a good character for
soberness, and I can't say nothing agen him in that par-
tikler."

*' Then what has he done with his money? "

O Truth ! from the high just Heavens answer for him to
British Justice, IV/taif has he done with his money ?

" No one don't know," replied the functionary. '* He
don't seem to have spent it all at home from the look of the
place."

Here a shrill small voice spoke out in incisive tones that
startled the Court —

"Theer't a liar, hossifer I Fayther have a given we
every penny he've earned all along. He don't earn no
more'n nine shillin' a week."

" Ay 1 and eleven of *em to take care on," added Mrs.
Nollekens, in a curious treble. " WTiat do ee stand there
for and talk such nonsense as that there to the magis-
.trates?"

" Silence in the Court ! " cried the Clerk. Mr. Leicester
gently reproved the interrupters.

"T-

JUSTICES' JUSTICE, ETC.

lOI

" Is this his little girl ? " asked the Vicar.

"Yes, sir."

" Step forward."

And Mary bearing Little Hodge, whose tiny face turned
round amused as he fixed his eyes alternately on the Justices
above him, came to the front, and being put on her mettle,
she, between questions and confessions and comments of
her own, told the story of Hodge's life for the last three
months, Hodge listening with his face in his hands. The
Vicar's features relaxed ; the Squire's muscles refused any
longer to affect the Sphynx.

" Fayther ain't done nothing wrong, sir. Ee wouldent
ha' hurt a fly. He've a been away trying to get more work,
sir. Don't ee go to punish him for that, sir. It's all
along o' this baby, since mother died, sir. Let him off this
time, sir."

Mary and Little Hodge began a concert together too dis-
tracting to be borne, and she was led for awhile out of Court.
Had the case ended here Hodge would have come off lightly.
Put sensible men in a good humor, opposite some monstrous
solecism in our laws, and they will find some way of defeat-
ing it. But the prisoner was asked by the Clerk whether he
had anything to say in his defence. And then, the man be-
ing desperate, and his whole soul within him raging with
combined remorse and sense of wrong, he burst out *ihus:

" What I've a got to say in my defence ? Nawtkin' ! 1
don't care to defend myself. You genlcmen a settin' there
've a knowed me all my life, an' there ain't a soul *live can
say one evil word about me afore this time. I've alius lived

I02

LITTLE HODGE.

honest, an' I meant to die honest, but you'd never a let me.
I went to Varmer Jolly — ee's here an' can say so — an' axed
him for the wa^es I 'vere righteously a earnin', but he
wouldn't help me. I went to you, sir, snidyou wouldent do
nothin' for sich as I. 'Twere no use to try to keep myself
and the childern at starvashun-pint, were it ? I might have
a made out to muggle along if so be Mister Jolly would a
rised my wages, or the Union could a kept on taken care o*
this last poor little un, till sich time as I might a married
some'un to keep the childern tidy; but I were a starvin,
genlemen ! and if so be you were a starvin you wouldent
stop to think. 'Twere no use for I to try to manage with
all they childern, and do a day's work in the bargain, on the
wittles I've been a livin' on. I do say no man can be hon-
est on the wages we be a gettin. Till sich time as the
Union had a forced the farmers to rise the wages there wern't
nothing for I but runnin' away, so fur as I see."

" What ! Are you one of these Union men, then ? " inter-
posed the Squire.

"Yes, I be," replied the prisoner, sullenly.

" If you please, your honor, he is one of the originators of
it," said Farmer Jolly, thus throwing in gratis a piece of un-
sworn evidence. Ewbank squirmed about on his seat most
distractedly.

"Quite a dangerous character," said the Justice. The
two constables in the Court, looking gravely at the broken-
hearted Hodge,, v^vinced an intelligent acquiescence in this
dictum. " A dingerous character indeed ! Deserting his
children, and a Unionist ! (In an undertone.^ Well, Mr.

'l\

■■

mmm

justices' justice, etc.

103

Clerk, I suppose the case is closed, eh ? Guilty by his own
confession. There is nothing more to be done but to pass
sentence ? ".

The Clerk nodded. He had been looking up the law for
the Justices, and now handed up the well-worn " Burns " to
the gentlemen on the bench. A little colloquy ensued, in
which the Clerk took part. Then the Squire cleared his
throat. Young Mr. Ewbank's uneasiness increased. He
half stood up and seemed about to speak, but he sat down
again, and tlie Squire said :

*' John Hodge, you have been brought before us charged
with an offence happily rare in these parts. In an experi-
ence of five-and-thirty years as a Guardian and as a magis-
trate, I have never met with a case in all its points so aggra
vated. I shall not refer to the fact that, by your own admis-
sion, you are associated with those unprincipled persons who
are endeavoring to introduce into this district the nefarious
and tyrannical system of Trade unionism. On that I say
nothing, except that it is an indication of your general dis-
position of which the Bench is bound to take notice. But
you are charged on behalf of the Guardians of Coddleton
Union with the specific offence of deserting your children.
You, the father of eleven little ones, whom God had given
you to nourish and cherish," said the Squire, with deep
solemnity, " basely abandoned them, and, for all you knew,
left them to perish I " " •

" Oh, naw, naw, naw ! " cried little Mary from the door,
in shrill passion. "He never meant to do no harm to
wel"

I04

LITTLE HODGE.

" Remove that person from the Court," said the Justice ;
and when the order had been executed, amidst some under-
tone comments of Mrs. Nollekens and wringing of hands of
poor Hodge, the magistrate proceeded —

" Now the law is quite clear. You are charged before us
to-day — and justly charged — as a rogue and vagabond "

Hodge started, and the fire kindled in his eyes.

" Yes, as a rogue and vagabond^ and on due proof to be
punished as such. Under the Vagrancy Act, 5th George the
Fourth, chapter 83 — * Every person running away leaving
his wife or his or her children chargeable^ or whereby she or
any of them shall become chargeable to any parish^ township^
or place — shall be deemed a rogue and vagabond within the
true intent and meaning of this Act.^ This is a salutary pro-
vision nearly as old as the Poor-law itself, for by a much
earlier Act it was enacted that * all such persons so running
away should be taken and deemed to be incorrigible rogues,
and endure the pain of incorrigible rogues.' Your offence
has been aggravated by the nature of your defence."

— The Justice was here interrupted by the entrance of a
man, whose appearance created some sensation in the Court.
It was Sammy Stedman ; and Henry Ewbank, beckoning
him to his side, engaged in an eager conversation with him.

** — You have defended your course," proceeded the
Justice, " by statements both untrue and intolerable, and
this has led us to consider it our duty to make an example
of you. Your sentence is that you be committed to the
House of Correction, there to be kept at h''»-d labor for the
space of six weeks."

■M^

justices' justice, etc.

105

" O good Godamitey ! " said Mrs. Nollekens, in search-
ing tones. " You'll suffer for this ! An' you, a parson, a
sittin by and taken part with him ! Sure as there be a
God above — " Her eloquence was dexterously stifled by
the big hand of a constable, and she was carried out of
Court in an attitude of vigorous protest.

It was then that Samu./ Stedman stood up beside young
Ewbank and said, bluntly —

" Hold, gentlemen ! I understand this whole affair is
illegal. You have no jurisdiction ! "

" Sit down, sir ! What right have you to address the
Bench?"

" The right of any honest Englishman, your honor, who
sees an injustice about to be perpetrated," said young
Ewbank, unable to restrain himself any longer. " The man
is right, sir. The Court can have no jurisdiction by the
principles of Magna Charta, because the Justices are parties
to the prosecution."

The Squire was livid. He made a tremendous effort to
command himself, and failed.

"Henry, are you mad?" he shouted. "Sit down, sir!
I— I— eh ? What ? "—to the Clerk. The latter had risen
to whisper to him.

" Sentence has been pronounced," said the Clerk. " The
jurisdiction is statutory, Mr. Ewbank. Remove the pris-
oner ! "

The young barrister had fallen into a serious error. His
zeal entirely overran his discretion and exceeded his knowl-
edge. His principles were better than his law. No won-

io6

LITTLE HODGE.

der. He might well have believed that English law would

not have been disgraced by so monstrous an anomaly : he

could only credit, when examination had proved it, that on

the contrary it was .xpressly enacted. Outside of London

there can be no case in which the Guardians are concerned

wherein the Justices themselves, who are all ex-officio

Guardians, are not parties ; an3 if it be supposed that, as

Guardian and Judge, the Justice is equally disinterested,
one needs only to study the above instance to convince him
that a person who has already decided on a case in a less
responsible and more informal tribunal, is not a fit person
to try the same question where it affects the liberty of one
of Her Majesty's lieges.

IPD

PART IV,

THE CLIMAX OF DISUNION.

CHAPTER I.

A WELCOME HOME.

Round and round went the treadmill with diurnal regular-
ity, and up and down upon its urgent steps the prisoner at
fixed intervals pursued his Sisypheian task. Round and round
turned the great wheel of Time, and up and down went the
weary feet of Poverty upon the relentless boards as they
came up to the tread, until the whole head grew dizzy aiid
the whole heart faint, and even the Angel of Hope, last of
heavenly things to be lost to the eye of Despair, was
blinded from sight. Round and round went the great mill
of Labor, and behold, strong and earnest, weak and wicked
ones trod it side by side, ever moving but never upwards,
striving sometimes to stay the fatal motion or to cast them-
selves down from their bewildering toil, but ever finding
their feet drawn down by the magnets of Necessity and
forced to plod on again in a monotonous mimicry of ascent.
Round, too, went the wheel of human Hope, carrying on its
circle a few happy yeomen earnest in their work, who
mounted painfully but surely, step by step, towards higher
and better things. Round rolled the year, bearing with it
to its close the aging, tiring hearts, minds, and bodies of the

io8

LITTLE HODGE.

t '

great world, with all their aggregating griefs ; and as its
hours came and went, there was poor Emily Byrton, weep-
ing, her lover — no longer admitted to be hers, forbidden the
threshold he used so cheerily to cross — counting the hours
with palpitati'^ig heart and secret tears, or bravely struggling
to master a grief that would not be comforted. For the day
when Henry Ewbank chose to give way to his generous but
inconsiderate impulse, he had received from a servant as he
left the court a hastily-written note in the Squire's hand.
It warned him that he had irremediably forfeited Mr. Byr-
ton' s confidence. It interdicted any further intercourse with
his daughter — "a decision which I communicate to the son
of my oldest and warmest friend with deep pain, but from a
clear sense of duty. Your sympathies have run away with
your judgment. Your law was as bad as your act, and you
have made a fool of yourself." Young men of precocious
abilities and natural generosity should be cautious nowa-
days to carry themselves with extreme restraint. 'Xis unsafe
to be too candid in political thought. Premature disclosure
of ideas and sympathies, however right, may ruin a man
long before the time has come when it is safe to avow
them, yet he may live to see others rise upon the advocacy
of opinions that blasted his success. Ewbank was too
honorable to take advantage of Emily's devotion to him.
He bore the separation like a man, and gave himself up
with renewed energy to the practice of his profession.

Round and round went the mill in the House of Correc-
tion, and round rolled the great wheel of Time. We will
not follow John Hodge over those painful steps

A WELCOME HOME.

109

Indeed, die shame weighed him down more than anything
else. Meanwhile Little Hodge and Mary thrived under
Mrs. NoUekens's care. It was cleverly managed by the
authorities that Hodge's release from the House of Correction
should concur with the return of his family from the work-
house. When he had, with shamefaced looks, trudged
home, he met the deputy and nine of his children at the
door of his cottage. I wish I could describe the meeting.
The officer was not unkind. He had brought the key of the
cottage and some food. He said, however —

"It's now your meet and right and bounding duty to take
keer of these young uns. Master, and don't ee go to evade
it. You'll be watched pretty close now, I tell ee, so don't
ee go fur to run away again."

Hodge answered not. He looked dreamily at his children,
who set up a loud and bitter cry. It scared the relieving-
officer away.

The decision of the Justices had been so consistent with
the general course of English law as to be the least utili-
tarian and most expensive result that could have been
effected. It cost the country near upon two hundred
pounds, which, at Hodge's rate of wages, would have main-
tained him and his family in luxury for about four years :
two statements not necessarily related to each other, but
worth making.

LITTLE HODGE.

CHAPTER II.

THE AGONIES OF SOLUTION.

The eyes of the country were now fixed upon the struggle
going on in the district of Coddleton. An old system was
on its trial ; and in truth, it had been rudely shaken. The
State-in-which-it-has-pleasecV Providence- to-place-you theory,
which had for generations determined the circumstances of
life for their forefathers and fathers, and was still the gospel
of clergy and squires, was found to be no longer applicable
to the case of Hodge and Little Hodge, and the Hodges to
come. That parental or patronal relation in iigriculture,
"so unlike all other relations of master and laborer, and
therefore not lightly to be interfered with," seemed to be in
danger, and not to be the eternal institution a fond bucolic
faith had pictured it. Commercial principles were pushing
their way into this rustic, romantic, half-domestic community.
Hinds were asserting the right of combination. Political
economy had broken loose from the wicked town and was
wildly careering about the innocent country. Meantime
the Laborers' Union pursued its way with varying success.
Large subscriptions after a tune enabled the infant Union to
establish itself on a strong financial basis, and this peculiarity
in its formation gave it additional power in its first passes
with the employers. It met their refusals by withdrawing
men and sending them to the North of England or deport-
ing then, to Canada and New Zealand. But for the sim-
plicity and honesty of the leaders, these funds might have

■

mimm

■appMH^

THE AGONIES OF SOLUTION.

Ill

been a source of danger; but they were administered as if
the men had subscribed them, and the surplus was carefully
invested. Every effort was mad(j to induce the members to
keep up their subscriptions through the summer, Sammy
Stedman urging upon them tne duty of thrift and s,elf-
restraint in preparation for the winter. He had anticipated
that then the farmers would find some practical mode of re-
venge. Thus was brought home to many men who had
never thought of it before, the practice of economy ; while
there was set before them a worthy reason and object in its
exercise. The value of this lesson was long afterwards
evinced in a variety of ways.

As harvest came on the lock-out collapsed. No laborers,
as we have seen, would come in from any other part of the
country. An atteiiipt to import Irishmen failed. China
and India were not convenient enough to supply harvest-
men ij outwitted capitalists, f To government would have
dared to intervene in the dispute by supplying soldiers to do
the work. The farmers could only come to terms. Wages
went up, the men went in. There was coolness. There
were muttered threats about "biding the time," but for the
present not a man was evicted. During the harvest the
farmers admitted that their work had never been better
done. They found that the increased pay had wrought
some magnetic change on the hobbledehoys of last year.
Sammy Stedman used Hodge's case with great art. Hodge
was represented as the first martyr of agricultural union.
Litde Hodge became a proverbial emblem of the laborers*
need and helplessness. The Rev. Baptist Bunyan preached

ira

LlTTLii liODGE.

upon that tiny mortal from the text, " O Lord, how long ? "
immediately exclaiming, " Twenty-two inches and not weigh-
ing seventeen pounds." Mr. Leicester and Mr. Byrton
were terribly scathed by Radical journals. The Tory papers
eulogized them for the mettle they had shown in an age
when it was fashionable to truckle to the democracy.

The Union meanwhile had adopted rules to regulate strikes
which, had the employers taken the trouble to read them,
ought to have quieted their alarm. Violence was forbidden.
No strike was to take place without a month's clear notice ;
and, that there might bt no temptation to take unfair ad-
vantage of the necessities of liarvcst-time, they se' tied that
in the absence of notice or a special agreement, the rate of
wages ruling at the outset of harvest was to hold good
throughout. Th'^ number of hours of a day's work was fixed,
and overtime was to be paid extra. No rules were adopted
to restrict the number of apprentices or to limit the division
of labor. The most arbitrary provision was that forbidding
the employment of women in field-work — a rule dictated by
a healthy sentiment, but certainly not consistent with per-
sonal freedoiii. On the whole, the association when calmly
examined was simply a fair and not injudicious combination
to win the laborer a standing-ground on a level with the
wage-payer. But landlords, farmers, and priests chose to
ignore all these elements of good, and clothed the innocent
Union with all the terrors of Jactjuerie. They fought a myth
that did not exist, and themselves raised issues the others
had never thought of. It was alleged that the Union would
become a political institution ; and, indeed, no act tending

MM^HIliihawMMlHMMi

^.i...^.

THE AGONIES OF SOLUTION

to convert it into one was foregone by its opponents. The
Church was said to be endangered by tb.e excitement among
the yokels ; and in the result the yokels began to consider
what that meant, and to accept the issue. The land ques-
tion was averred by terrified peers and squires to be it the
bottom of the agit£*tion ; and, of course, the tears of these
persons suggested to real agitators a new article in their pro-
gramme. Thus the obstinacy, folly, and prejudice of one
side excited the passions and avidities of the other.

Coddleton forthwith absorbed a great part cf the amateur
and professional managers of political reforms. The puz-
zled rustics were assailed by emigration agents : they were
told that their emancipation would depend on woman-suf-
frage : they learned that unless the Outrageous Distempers
Acts were repealed the regeneration of the agricultural la-
borer was a matter of uncertainty : they listened to abstract
essays or crude diatribes against the tenure of land by any
private individual whatever, and dimlv imagined how mat-
ter, would be when it ^vas all administered for their good
by an impersonal power named the State : or they were as-
sured that the improvement of their condition was intimately
connected with the downfall of the Church. Indeed there
was no " movement," with or without the machinery of a
league, of which representatives did not rush into Coddle-
ton to saddle its principles on the coming TJnion, Much as
there was of the grotesque in this, it was natural. These
people had been shut out of the world and its policies ; now
they were like Joash the king— an infant brought out uf hid-
ing to take his part at ruling, and suddenly called upon to

T«

"^f

114

LITTLE HODGE

exercise judgment upon unknown conditions. If one were
inclined to blame some of the busybodies who did not re-
member that there was a time to embrace and a time
to refram from embracing reforms, as well as lovers,
it should not be overlooked how much of this was, as
we have seen, provoked and prompted by the policy
adopted on the other side. A manly, candid, generous
treatmePc of the Coddleton Unionists might have restrained
both parties from unnatural hostilities, and have prolonged
the safety of institutions which afterwards trembled in the
balance. But old institutions on their defence are often as
blind as Jacob, without the same method in their blindness.
Interveners were not wanting on the other side. It also
had its agitators ; but as they came in the guise of Peers and
Ecclesiastics, of Baronets and Members of Parliament, their
whimsies on the part of "law and order" were reported in
the newspapers and approved by the organs of the Philis-
tines. The cleverest pencil in England, often so nobly em-
ployed, basely lent itself in the interest of property to cari-
cature in the grossest manner the advocates of weakness
against injustice — and humanity against selfishness. What-
ever represented privilege, property, land, ranged itself
against the Coddleton Unionist^ and their friends. The
Bench of Bishops, before whom — as vice-regents in the
Church on behalf of Her Majesty and its other Head in
Heaven — all men were of equal standing, afforded a few
specimens of hierarchs too farsighted and too piiilosophical
to hail with sympathy an effort for the development of better
earthly conditions, of truer freedom, and (more serious mat-

THE AGONIES OF SOLUTION.

ter !) of greater power, in a class hitherto looked upon as the
Heaven-ordained slaves of property and the least trouble-
some numerical units of a State Church. God Ibrbid we
should reprehend these ecclesiastics unduly or assail them
with malice. Fortunately they did not wholly represent
their Church. They chose their own point of Church de-
fence, and manifested, no doubt, an honest idea of the
Church's position and duty. If any one or all of them pre-
fer to show the Church banded with property against poverty,
with land against labor, with Manchester economy against
social science, with ecclesiastical privilege against free
thought, surely they have counted the cost and are willing to
endure all things — even the formulation of their views by
an alien from their commonwealth. As vicars of Christ,
they must be Accredited with sincerity of heart and purity
from the taint of flesh. If to a spectator there seem to be
something ironical in their situation, it is of their own choice,
and they are voluntary martyrs to the satire of facts.

Mr. Byrton was so honestly impressed with the idea that
the laborers were being misled by interested revolutionaries,
that his activity in promoting the diffusioii of correct princi-
ples of economy, and of proper ideas of the relations of
classes, was unceasing. A Bishop was invited to stay at
Byrton Hall, and lectured the men of Hankerlcy on the
providential dispensation of labor and the superiority of
good-feeling over the selfishness of good wages. His rcdec-
tion« on the danger of agitation were crude and harsh. Were
I to report what he said it would not be believed. He was
sorry for it afterwards, but was too infallible to say so.

'<•>« «•

ii6

LITTLE HODGE.

A Peer, celebrated for his abilities, deemed it to be his
duty to speak upon the question. He remarked that as the
laborers had formed a Union, it was impossible to overlook
the fact. He therefore urged the farmers to take cognizance
of it. He pointed out that there was nothing illegal in com-
bination, even though it were promoted by " agitators," — but
he thought these ought to be scotched. He also laid down
the principle that men were entitled to remuneration for their
labor, aiid therefore ought to have it. He said that if they
asked too much they could not get it. On the other hand,
if the employer offered too little he could not have the labor.
" Therefore," he said, " you see clearly that there are inevit-
able principles regulating these questions, and they must be
recognized and acted upon. No other solution is possible."
Etcetera. The farmers were puzzled to apprehend the sim-
plicity of this solution, but they cheered the Peer because
he had the reputation for conmion-sense.

The only other person one need mention is Sir Walter
Waggington, Bart., M.P., who had ulterior views not easily
justified, and somewhat undefmed, even to himself. There
never was so kind a man who aspired to statesmanship.
His face was the prow of a radiant and smooth-sliding State-
gondola. He had been a Tory minister : he was now a
social reformer. No man was so eager to reconcile the
irreconcilable and to win a Conservative success on Social-
istic principles. He was in favor of restricted revolution.
He talked enough Communism to have hanged a Commu-
nist. He had discovered that the age was progressive : he
desired that it should progress and Toryism triumph. He

s-^-.jbbbip'

mmmmmtmmimim

":m^-

-¥%

THE AGONIES OF SOLUTION,

117

ascertained that the working-man • had hopes : he tried to
foster them — they lent sunshine to a dreary life. In his view
every laborer should have a cottage, some land and a cow.
He objected to the man's claiming it, or conspiring to get it,
or trying to force it from a reluctant class, or obtaining it by
modifications of the law or by purcliase ; he desired to give
it to him by Act of Parliament, if it could be done without
interfering with the existing status. True, the only solution
on that condition was the reclamation of the North Sea, but
he did not say so. Sufficient unto the day was the discovery
thereof The amount of sympathy that the genial features
and timid socialism of Sir Walter Waggington drew from
*' Constitutional working-men " was marvellous. If cniel
criticasters in political economy or mde and incredulous
Radicals among the lower orders laughed good-naturedly at
his vagaries, it was not strange. The world was not worthy
of him. It would have been more worthy had it recognized
his claims to leadership and made him the head of a Minis-
try. But it would not. Meantime, even in adversity, he
was the manly, good-hearted gentleman. He said in his
vague, plethoric, and involuted style to the Hankerley labor-
ers :

"My friends, happiness does not depend upon wealth.
Happiness depends on something far higher — upon a thank-
ful spirit, a contented mind. The poor man possessed of
these attributes has within him elements of happiness which
the rich man is entirely destitute of, provided he does not
properly discharge the duties of his station. In my belief
(and I am by no means apt to exaggerate, and will not ask

^•'wm

urnpot^p

."^W "W

Ii8

LITTLE HODGE.

you to overrate the blessings you enjoy) the laborers have no
occasion to be led by any union, or to be led astray by dis-
contented agitators. I apprehend that what they mainly
stand in want of throughout the country are three things,
namely, better education, better houses, and better food.
If these requirements were looked to, legislated for, and
promoted, the laborers would cease to be the dupes of those
who fostered a spirit of discontent, and would lead far better
and nobler lives."

All this the laborers enthusiastically applauded. And this
was all they got from their patronizing friends. The Peer
and the Bishop and the Baronet preached contentment, or
cursed agitation, and went their way. That rugged old Free-
Churchman, Republican, and Communist, the Apostle James,
measured with cruel accuracy the tether of such philanthropy
as this : /f a brother or sister be naked and destitute of daily
foody and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace ; be ye
warmed and filled ; notwithstanding ye give them not those
things which are needful to the body ; what doth it profit 1

Hi «

CHAPTER III.

AN ANTIDOTE TO PROSELYTISM.

Farmer Jolly could not afford to do without any of his
men, and consequently for a few weeks there was plenty in
the house of Hodge. His wages of sixteen shillings a week
enabled him to get Little Hodge looked after and set Mary

«.•*-

S?* '•*«(<

AN ANTIDOTE TO PROSELYTISM.

119

of his
inty in
week
Mary

free for the gleaning. Hodge became a member of the Union
Committee, wherein he developed an unexpected amount of
good sense and shrewdness. Each parish, indeed, had its
little branch. There, for the first time, many a village hind
learned the art of public business — an art in its dissemina-
tion so precious to Englishmen — so essential to the safety
of the State.

Mr. Jolly had a favorite ploughman, to whom he gave
sixteen shillings a week, and who had hitherto proved deaf
to the blandishments of the Unionists. He was a man,
however, and had felt some sympathy for Hodge ; and
though with country cunning he took care not to divulge
his opinions to his master, he very much approved of the
Union movement. When Richard Roe saw that the result of
the combination had been to raise the wages of inferior men
nearly up to the level of his own, and found that Farmer
Jolly seemed in no hurry to re-establish the former propor-
tion, his soul was vexed within him. He asked himself what
had been gained by cutting loose from his fellows? He
had been told that the Union rule would be a uniform rate
of wages, but he found that Hodge and others were receiv-
ing two or three shillings more than less capable men — in
fact, that the Union had driven the farmers not only to a
general rise of wages, but, as a result of that, to adopt the
principle of natural selection, and to pay better laborers
higher wages. So Richard Roe went over in the dusk of a
September evening to confer with Hodge voon the thoughts
that burned within his brain. It is not the conversation, but
tlie result with which we have to do Roe had finally de*

""'"^IP'^PP

I20

LITTLE HODGE.

cided to join the Union, and was leaving the house, when
he saw the burly form of Farmer Jolly getting over the stile
from the road, and coming up the footpath that led past
Hodge's cottage to the farm-house. The farmer had been
at the monthly dinner of the Hankerley Agricultural Club,
and was not only primed with fresh wrath against the
Unionists, but with bad wine. His quick eye lighted on
the familiar form of his ploughman stealing away in the
gloaming from Hodge's house.

" Hallo ! D — n it, is that you, Roe, coming from that
d — d Unionist's house?"

" Aye, sir, it be I."

Jolly ran forward and seized him by the throat. The
gentleman was drunk and in a frenzy. Roe was a powerful
man and was not drimk. The farmer's hand was a rude
one.

" Be you goin to jine the Union ? " said Jolly, white with
passion, and falling into the vernacular, as he always did
when he forgot himself.

The fire was beginning to flash in Richard Roe's eyes,
and his hands began to twitch with a terrible nervousness.

" Leave go o' I ! " he shouted, half-throttled.

"You be d — d ! Be you goin to jine the Union?"

" Yes, I be," said Richard Roe ; and drawing back his
hand he drove it into the face of the drunken man, who
went down like a falling tree.

John Hodge could just discern this incident from his door,
and in the stillness of the night heard every word. He saw
Richard Roe, after a glance at his prostrate master, walk

111

ARGUMENTUM AD HOMINEM.

121

away, and then he saw Jolly sit up and wipe something from
his face with his handkerchief, at the same time cursing his
ploughman and Hodge with great vigor. He ran forward
and assisted him to rise. The farmer allowed him to do it ;
but, as he turned towards home, he muttered, in almost un-
utterable rage :

" Curse you ! I'll pay you for this."

4c i|c

CHAPTER IV.

ARGUMENTUM AD HOMINEM.

The next morning, while most of the men were engaged
in the stack-yard, Hodge, with a team and a boy, was
ploughing one of the far fields. He had watched the sun
from seven o'clock, and still witli patient alternation he
drove his bright share through the fallow in regular lines up
and down the great field. At about ten o'clock he saw the
familiar gray horse of his master, and with some surprise
recognized on its back his master's form. He watched his
approach not without trepidation. There was something
sinister in the air with which Farmer Jolly directed the gray
across the furrows, looking not to right or left, and making
straight for tho place where Hodge was ploughing.

" Stop ! " shouted the farmer.

Hodire drew the lines and took off his felt. In his hand
he held the plough-whip, with its heavy handle loaded with
massive rings of brass, and its brass cap at the end — a terri-
ble weapon in strong hands. As he rode up Jolly snatched

■•WF

"P«

'V •f«"<mM

122

LITTLE HODGE.

the whip from the clown's grasp. It was an old one, and
the lash had worn short.

" Hold my horse," said he to the lad.

Hodge saw in his master's face a frightful resolution.
There also, just below the right eye, was a slight gash in a
setting of swollen black-and-blue that told of the severity of
Richard Roe's fist.

" Now, you d — d coward, I'll show you how to push the
Union on my farm."

Down on the man's shoulder, just missing his bare head,
went the first blow ; down on the soil he was tilling went
John Hodge. The farmer had clubbed the whip, and now
up and down it rose and fell on the shrieking, prostrate form,
on shoulders, sides, back, arms and legs, with all the
strength of a powerful man and ill the weight of that loaded
weapon. The boy, in an agony of fear, let go the horse
and ran away. Up and down some sixty or seventy times
went the strong arm and the loaded whip, till the arm was
weary and he who wielded it had lost his breath. Then and
only then he stayed. As he staggered along the field
towards his horse tiv. groans of the beaten thing he had left
behind him went up to Heaven.

* *
CHAPTER V.

THE SCALES OF JUSTICE.

It was Sally NoUekens on whom Hodge's eyes first
opened when he recovered from the syncope into which he

THE SCALES OF JUSTICE.

123

fell soon after the farmer had left him. There too were
Nollekens, and Richard Roe, and our friend the doctor of
the other Union. He detested the new Union, but he had
a heart ; so that, as he examined John Hodge, his blood
coursed through his veins in boiling indignation. Sixty-six

definite stripes and blows. Here on the back no, I will

not describe it : the man had been worse treated than that
deserving ruffian whose punishment, gauged by a surgeon
and applied with scientific skill, has excited the compassion
of amiable sensibility. Read the accounts specially provided
for public edification in the Electric Meteor j and add to them
blood, and wounds, and clothing driven into the skin, and
be curious to know no more. It was a fortnight before
Hodge could walk.

The horror and detestation created by this incident were
a credit to English society. Mr. Leicester several times
called to see the patient. The Squire sent regularly to
know how he was getting on, and the messenger did not go
empty-handed. Emily Byrton, with a woman's delight at an
opportunity of freely showing a forbidden sympathy, would
be found in Hodge's chimney-comer, nursing that deliciously
small baby, or reading an entertaining book to its father.
And (shall I tell it ?) there one day, quite r.nexpectedly, and
so very, very awkwardly ! came in Henry Ewbank, full of
generous wrath, determined to see for himself how far buc"-
lic rage nad dared to go. It was so annoying to both the
young peojjle ! and so embarrassing ! and what was worse,
that stupid invalid forthwith turned round and went to sleep.
And, half an hour after, Emily Byrton is breaking through

i«

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I-

124

LITTLE HODGE.

the doorway of the cottage from some restraining arms, and,
with flushed face and sparkling eyes, half running from
temptation. Well might the Squire that evening wonder
what had brought back the fresh color into the face which
had been latterly paling and fading before his eyes, and dis-
turbing his self-confidence.

The farmers and squires repudia«:ed Jolly's conduct, while
they said they had no doubt Hodge deserved all he got.
Slave-owners in America were wont to repudiate the *' oc-
casional " acts of barbarity which distinguished that institu-
tion. The farmer was most blamed by his friends fo- having
done a stupid act which compromised their cause. I can
credit very few of i/iem with sympathy for the flesh and
blood that had suffered so fearfully. A hundred of them
would have done the same thing had they dared. The
humanity of men is generally worth little if you throw their
purses in the other scale.

Jolly's lawyers endeavored on his behalf to settle the case.
His wife did her best to make up to Hodge for the outrage
committed upon him by her husband. Hodge was besieged
to accept a sum of money for his broken skin and lost time.
Great as was the temptation, however, he resisted it. My
man was no hero. I believe he would have taken the
money had not Sammy Stedman and Henry Ewbank
buckled him up, and but that the Unionists agreed to make
it good to him. The end of the matter was instructive to
the student of English life, society, and law. The case came
on at a Petty Sessions. Mr. Leicester stayed away. The
Squire attended. Two other landlords were on the bench.

'■ik,^^

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THE SCALES OF JUSTICE.

125

Henry Ewbank, retained by the Union solicitor brought
from London, since no attorney in the neighborhood would
take the case, appeared for the complainant. Farmer Jolly
needed no counsel. It was si rht to get the respondent
committed for " unlawful wounding," an offence that would
have taken his case to the Assizes, and might have procured
him one or two years' penal servitude. The P-^nch, how-
ever, deciding that Mr. Jolly's intention had been merely to
give a beating with a whip, and not to injure the man, and
consequently that it was a case of common assault, in which
they had summary jurisdiction, fined Mr. Jolly in the full
penalty of five pounds.

On the same day, in the same court, before the same Jus-
tices, was heard the case of the Queen v. Roe, in which
Hodge was called as a witness. Richard Roe stood on his
defence for that he, being a serf, had violently beaten and
assaulted his master. It was considered an aggravation of
his offence that he alleged and proved his master's drunken-
ness — a reason, so the Bench held, why he ought to have re-
spected Jolly's weakness. He was sentenced to a fortnight's
imprisonment without the option of a fine. The Bench de-
clared that it was necessary for the public safety to put down
the mutinous spirit arising among the laborers in the county.

O Heaven ! whore meek eyed, pure-eyed holy Justice sits
enthroned, looking down on these sad travesties of her ad-
ministration, remember and pity our imbecile humanity, and
lay not these things to our charge I

t,^

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■•»' " w

126

LITTLE HODGE.

CHAPTER VI.

ALARUMS. — EXCURSION S.

The harvest was now over. The great stacks of corn,
and oats, and hay loomed up in helds or barnyards, noble in
their proportions, and gladsome to the farmers' eyes. The
click and burr of the threshing-machines or the thud of the
flail on the threshing-floor sounded in every part of the dis-
trict. Then the early frosts began to nip the vegetation.
Then beg^n the clothing of the October trees to IUj\ «iad
scatter about, and the. changing rags hung brown and shriv-
elled, till the cruel winterly winds tore them from the limbs
and sprays, and sent them in mottled clouds driving through
the gaunt woods or stripped copses — now whirling over
lawns and meadows, now cosily loitering awhile in great
heaps wherever the whimsical wind would let them rest ; till
by and by it would change its mind and come roaring round
from some new quarter, and blowing straight into the se-
questered nooks, scattered the brown feathers all over the
face of the land. So forward towards November, with al-
ternate days of cold clear sunshine and of dismal storm,
dark fog-ridden nights, angry winds, and the vicious frosts
that heralded the chilling, killing time to come. Ah ! then
it was that Poverty and Labor, iiuddled together, sat shud-
dering to think that the warm, blessed Summer was at ai.
end, as they looked out on bleak heavens and a bleaker
earth, vainly searching in the cload-curtained sky for one
gleam of the star of hope I

iili
■!

1^4

"W^

ALARUMS. — EXCURSIONS.

127

It was then that the farmers began to draw their lips to-
gether, and, counting how. much the rise in wages had cost
them, felt inclined to give play to the resentment they had
so long been forced to suppress. The Squire's policy was
adopted. Evictions were frequent, sometimes cruel ; but
they were for Dme time met with decis'/^ action on the part
of the Union. The evicted were at once drafted off to other
places — many to the Colonies. These were some of the
best men in the district, and they never returned. " If you
must have more wages," the farmers said, " we cannot pay
them all the year round. We shall do without as many as
we can through the winter. We shall keep the best of you,
and take the others only when we want them." This was a
bad lookout for the rest, but it was a natural policy and
could not be gainsayed. Others talked of turning chcir farms
to grass, whereby, as they alleged, they should be able to
manage with fewer hands ; but, since the altfirnative was
the purchase of stock to grow on the grass, the change re-
quired a good deal of capital. This made the general ap-
plication of the remedy for the present impossible. Farmer
Jolly, after what had happened, was ashamed to turn out
Hodge. But he strongly approved of the evictions. Poor
Mr. Truscott felt more angry than his neighbors, because in
face of the rise of wages bankruptcy was inevitable. That
such a result must oft t.-n ensue from many movements where-
in the interests of men clasji — wherein some superior ad-
vantage of one cln^s 01 clique over another is in the course
of redress, is very clear ; but would it not be poor wisdom
to argue on such an account that a great, beneficent opera-

mt^^mt

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128

LITTLE HODGE.

tion should be foregone in behalf of the few weak and un-
fortunate ones whom it must destroy ? Those who urged
that they could not afford to pay the rate of wages demanded
by the Unionists, or that they would be ruined by the in-
creased cost of labor, were simply putting in an ad miseri-
cordiam plea for labor below the market price. 'Twould be
as reasonable to ask the Bank of England not to raise its
rate of discount because weak speculators and struggling
merchants were likely to be ruined by it. The bucolic econ-
omists who referred in defence of low wages to the all-power-
ful influence of the law of supply and demand, could with
little consistency contend that the law must be made subser-
vient to the capacity of some men, or a class .of men, to
carry on remunerative agriculture at anything but a low
standard of wages : any more than merchants should protest
against high rates of discount because they rendered profits
precarious.

However, right or wrong in their political economy, the
farmers were agreed in their determination to fight the La-
borers' Union. But in their present tactics some of their
allies deserted them. The Church would lend itself to the
defence of privilege, but not to cruelty and oppression.
The Vicar of Hankerley had of late been seriously debating
with himself his line of conduct on this social question. Mr.
Linkboy, watching his opportunities, often mentioned facts
coming to his notice, which made the Vicar uneasy about
the justice of the side he had so ardently espoused. He
grew very cool in his sympathy with the Squire, who, having
sacrificed a son-in-law to his prejudices, was bound to be

wmmm.

A VISITOR.

129

Stubbornly vindictive. When Farmer Jolly committed the
outrage on poor Hodge Mr. Leicester's generous manliness
burst out. He boldly went to Jolly's house, and reproved
him with a vigor so earnest and terrible that the farmer
trembled. Coming from the parson's suave and gentle lips,
the words were like Jcnives. Jolly was cowed by them,
though he was not cured. Moreover, Mr. Leicester went
so far as to express opinions not complimentary of the judic-
ial finding in the Hodge and Roe cases. The Squire and
he would have fallen out if such old friends could have
quarrelled.

CHAPTER vn.

A VISITOR.

One afternoon the Vicar and his Curate were engaged in
the Vicarage parlor on some matters connected with the
Church, when their attention was drawn to the window by
the sound of wheels. A gig, familiar at the Coddleton sta-
tion, some seven miles off, was coming up the drive, carry-
ing besides the driver a person who would have attracted re-
mark equally at Ujiji and on the boulevards at Paris. His
extreme length — a better mode of characterizing his apix^ar-
ance than to speak of his height— was not modified by any
proportionate stoutness. Nevertheless, the spectator was
left to guess as to the real anatouiy of the man, and a clear
judgment thereon was mucli confounded, from the fact that

his clothes seemed to have been constructed to fit a body
9

I30

LITTLE HODGE.

of prodigious bulk ; whence one was apt :o conjec-
ture that the visitor came of a gigantic stock, whose gar-
ments he wore, though he was himself but an imperfectly
developed specimen. His brown face was cracked and
wrinkled like a raised m p of Switzerland, the cracks and
wrinkles looking as rigid as a plaster cast until some inner
secret convulsion set the whole in motion, when the play of
electric expression all over his curious fretwork of features
was a sight ever to be remembered. From a very large
head fell in long, straight locks a quantity of grayish hair,
and an Imperial of the same shade tipped the lower end of
his protracted face. His eyes, quick, searching, restless as
those of a hawk, played in the great cavities that lay between
the heavy gray eyebrows and the high cheek-bones, with
startling and magnetic power.

This gentleman, we should mention, had been whiling
away the time in a conversation with the driver, who re-
marked that as they went along his fare took frequent notes.
He also observed with surprise that the gentleman seemed
intimate with the locality, though he was sure 'twas a "fur-
riner," and equally sure that he had never been seen in
those parts before.

" Ah ! " had the fare said, as they drove into Hankerley,
" this is Hankerley ! This, sir, if I'm a true prophet, is the
cradle of liberty to the down-trodden serfs of your country.
From this spot the trumpet has blown to call the slaves of
toil to resurrection. Yes, sir / "

The driver became painfully interested. He held an un-
certain theory about his fare's sanity.

^^^K

Sib.

A VISITOR.

131

" Now," said the gentleman again, standing up six feet
three in the gig, as they reached the middle of the sprawling
street of shops, houses, and cottages constituting the village,
and taking such a survey of the country as a peripatetic
semaphore might have been expected to accomplish, " I
must first see the little individooal vho is the cause of all
this muss. Then, just for curiosity, I want to lay my eyes
once on that onhandsome skunk, Nicholas Jolly, if the Devil
hasn't taken a fancy to import him into his do-minions to be
his executioner. And I guess I'm bound to see Samuel
Stedman, the greatest man of the age, sir, next to John
Bright of Birmingham and Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn.
And I've chalked out, if God spares me twenty-four hours,
to have intervoos with Mr. Byi ton, the great land-owner, and
the Reveiend Winwood Leicester, Master of Arts — (he was
reading from his memoranda) — and give then: the o-pinion
of an American citizen on this crisis in the history of this de
caying old state. Then I guess I'll travel."

As the American had vented these designs, his great body
and limbs moved about within his extravagant garments
with mysterious excitement. The driver was more aston-
ished than ever. They first saw Hodge and the baby, whom
the stranger embraced, and could with difficulty refrain from
purloining. He said *tif he had hmi at Mount Napoleon
he guessed he'd lengthen that young cricket's cords and
strengthen his stakes to an all-fired extent." The stranger's
hat suffered severely in the low cottage, and his head did
not come off" scatheless, However, he succeeded in getting
" one first-class bump, which he reckoned he'd keep till he

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132

LITTLE HODGE.

got home, to show American children how their brothers
and sisters Hved in Old England." Leaving Hodge a bun-
dle of books and tracts on prison discipline and other
schemes of philanthropy in America, and having failed to
catch a glimpse of Jolly, here was the stranger at the Vicar-
age door, drawing his huge length out of the gig. He sent
in a card. On it were printed these words :

JEHOIACHIN SETTLE.

Boys* and Girls'* Translation Institute^
Mount Napoleon^ Cayuga Coy.^ N". Y.

When, by the Vicar's directions, he was shown into the
parlor, the stranger's %ce broke into a grotesque smile as he
saw Mr. Linkboy, whose clerical garments first attracted his
eye.

"I pre-soome I'm addressing the Reverend Winwood
Leicester, Master of Arts ? "

Being referred to the right person, he said —

-' Well, sir, excoose my blunder, which was a nateral one,
seeing I didn't know one of you gentlemen from another,
and neither of you from Adam. Sir^ I've come to you on
an errend of hu-manity ! Shake hands."

Mr. Leicester with quiet gravity proffered his hand, and
begged the visitor to be seated.

" I have brought no letter of introduction to you, sir, be-
cause in my o-pinion one human being don't require intro-
ducing to another, and hadn't ought to. You'll see by my

wmmm

A VISITOR

T^33

card, sir, that I'm engaged in the service of humanity.
I board, lodge, feed, dress, educate, bind out, marry,
settle, and save from drink, crime, an^i damnation, the
souls and bodies of three thotijand five hundred children
in the State of New York an.iooally. If that ain't an intro-
duction to }'0u, sir, I renounce hu-manity."

Mr. I^eicester, entering into the humor of the situation,
assured the stranger that it was a claim on his goodwill he
could not reject.

" Sir, in the course of a tower to examine the institooshuns
of E[i-rope, I've come to be acquainted threw your daily
press with the case of Little Hodge and his father down
here in ycur parish of Hankerley, of which I o-pine you are
Lord Rector ? "

Mr. Linkboy and the Vicar could not refrain from laugh-
ing, and then hastened to apologize.

" Well, sir, I tell you candidly I'm not versed in your
English hierarchical institooshuns, but I believe I'm right in
saying you're a professed minister of the Lord in these
parts, and I pre-soome take an interest in the regeneration
of the world ? . . . . Then, sir, I have constitooted myself a
committee of one for the American nation, to inform you of
the brotherly interest we take in the solution of your great
social problems, and to give you the result of our experience
as a new country. Sir, you will excoose my remarkmg that
since I came into your country a fortnight since I've ob-
served among your people one universal delooshun. Your
people, sir, cling to ancient idees. You worship the Past —
I s'pose it's because you have a Past to worship. We, sir,

134

LITTLE HODGE.

the American nation, having no Past to worship, are forced
to worship the Present and the Future, and I guess we find,
with all our energy, and we con-ceit we're putty spry folk,
we have none to spare for anything else."

" I beg your pardon," said the Vicar, who feared that his
guest would wander endlessly in the regions of the abstract,
and anxious to bring him to the practical ; " has this any-
thing to do, sir, with the object of your visit ? I am much
engaged."

"Yes, sir/" exclaimed the visitor, starting up and navi-
gating the room with extraordinary skill and vivacity. " It
has to do, I reckon, with the question whether you're a go-
ing to let this grand old country go, as the great Carlyle
said of my country, over Niagary Falls, while you are wor-
shipping, and coddling, and dry-nursing the old, wilted,
bloodless, brainless, e-masculated relics of a con-dition of
so-ciety God Almighty must abolish for the benefit of man-
kind ; or whether you will turn your faces to the Sun of the
Future, with its grand, glorious, and e-ternal hopes of bless-
edness and deliverance."

The visitor delivered himself of this passage with a solem-
nity and emphasis that would have been effective in a great
public meeting.

The Vicar was puzzled what to do with his visitor. He
offered him a glass of wine.

" No, siriee ! not for Je-hoiachin Settle, I guess, while he's
Jiving. Sir, that pison never passes my lips. I'm a Tem-
perance lectoorer, and Grand Master of the Jonadab Lodge
of Cayuga Rechabites." * '

A VISITOR.

135

" Then I beg you will let me know," said Mr. Leicester,
" how I can serve you ? "

" Serve me, sir ! Serve ain't an American word, sir, since
Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery. We neither give nor
take service in my country. No, j/r, I require nothing at
your hands. I came to see, sir, if I could help you. 1
reckon your folks hereaway are about facing the problem
of the age, though you on the spot mayn't be 'cute enough
to see it. Yes, sirree ! The miserable creeturs you call
agricul-tooral laborers are beginning to wake up to the moosic
of Freedom, and the situation reminds me of i.n old hen I
once had on my farm in Cayuga County. Sir, she'd done
so much she was a long sight too ambitious. She lay one
nest of twenty-four eggs, and then sot down and tried to
hatch 'em. By spreading herself around putty wide, and
sprawling her wings till every feather was doing double dooty,
she'd con-trived to keep 'em all puity warm up to a few
hours before the time when they had ought to have begun to
peep. Well, sir, I was curis to see how she'd manage the
lot. Sir, she'd move them eggs around that smartly that
they were all about of the same tempera-toor, but that wam't
very high, I guess. Sir, when the time had come and gone
when her family was expected, she grew kinder serious, and
I saw her with her head on one side considering the situation
nearly twenty-four hours. When two days more passed, and
no signs from the shells, she broke one on 'em to see wnat
the matter was : and theer 'twas plain enough. She'd jest
had enough heat to bring the chick up to the point of
. moving, but true as you're there it couldn't open its mouth

■Va«

136

LITTLE HODGE.

to save its life. I guess 'twas a case of slow development
She sacrificed that one to her curiosity, but it made her go
on settin' another week, when she sot to in desperation and
broke the shells of the whole lot, and turned 'em all out in
the sun : and though they looked a mean lot to begin, she
kinder encouraged 'em on, and very soon they began to
' peep, peep ' like all creation. Well, sir, that brood grew
so strong and handsome that I sold every one of them at
twenty-five cents a-piece ; but the old mother, she'd had
such an anxious lime of it a settin' and a bringin' of 'em out,
that it broke her con-stitooshun and she died. Sir, your na-
tion has been a settin' for centoories on on-hatched eggs,
and I reckon they'll remain on-hatched onless you b* \ the
shells yourselves and let 'em out into daylight. I'v., ^^en a
visiting that poor Hodge, and I'm dubious he's the broken
egg that'll start the experiment ; but your Aristocracy and
your Episcoopacy is not the sagacious old fowl I reckon it if
it don't learn a lesson and sot to and help your weak, on-
developed chicks out of their shells into air and sunshine."

The Vicar and Curate were amused with their visitor's
native style, though they did not appreciate the matter.

" May I ask," said Mr. Linkboy, to divert the conversa-
tion, " what the ' Boys' and Girls' Translation Institute ' is ? "

" Yes, sir / It's an institoot I established for picking boys
and girls out of the gutters and sewers of New York City
and translating them to Cayuga County, where we clean 'em
and lick 'em into shape, and then, sir, we give them a second
translation to a farmer's home in the Far West ; and I tell
you many a childless mother out there is a blessing me this

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mmngmmnfm

A VISITOR.

137

day for having provided her with a son or a daughter, all
ready to hand, and free of the expense and trouble of having
it for herself. Sir, by the blessing of God, that institooshun
has saved hundreds of poor little souls from starvation and
crime here and damnation hereafter. Praise the Lord ! "

The rugged features of the guest were overspread with a
gentle halo as he uttered these words with real emotion, and
the clergymen looked upon him with kindHer interest.

*' Now, sir," he said, " I've been studying your problem
of the agri cul-tooral laborer this last three days, and I guess
I've got hold of the end of the hank. From peroosing your
press, sir, I opine that U your thinkers and o-rators are
making one grand mistake — they're looking for a single spe-
cific ; and I guess they'll succeed about as well as old Dr.
Jayne of Philadelphy. He invented a 'universal specific,'
but he hadn't been selling it long before he was obliged to
come out with d, partickler cure for worms. Sir, you require
half a dozen specifics. There's your land question— well, I'm
not going into it, but I mention it. There's co-operation.
Co-operation won't save so-ciety, nor fill the bellies of all
creation, no more than steam did ; but it'll help along con-
siderable, I guess. There's the Trade-union. That won't
save your agri-cul-tooral population ; but it's a lever, and if
it's worked by smart men it'll pro-duce a sight of good.
There's emigration and migration. Those are in my line.
Well, sir, I tell you, if we Yankees owned this British Em-
pire, where the sun never sets, we'd develop that little estate
in a way to astonish you natives ! Sir, you'll be surprised if
I tell you the meanest idees we have of you Britishers in my

'ir-

138

LITTLE HODGE.

country is consarnin' your way of managing your magnificent
Empire. Howsomever, sir, I'm con-ceited your people will
live to try all these remedies and get them to work together ;
and my belief is, if you did you'd soon find your Poor-law
Unions wouH require taking in, like onhandy clothes, and
then I reckon you could utilize them for free education."

" I am afraid you are too sanguine, sir," said Mr. Leices-
ter. " The Poor-law is ineradiciible in this country. The
remedies you suggest have all been tried in a measure,
except the drastic one of Unionism, and what that will bring
forth none of us can foresee."

"What it will bring forth? Well, sir, I can't reckon on
anything certain in this enervated country ; but I do calki-
late that mountain won't bring forth a ridiculous muss,
anyhow. It has grit in it, or Jeroosalem's a delooshun.
It's about time your landed aristocracy got upheaved from
onderneath. I guecs no amount of ploughing and scratch-
ing on the surface '11 pro-juce any effect on //la/i. Sir, I've
studied this question, and I conclude that this movement
will transmogrify your English so-ciety. It will alter your
agricultoor, it will change your land-laws, it will improve the
conditions of your working-class, it will in the end give a
great stimulus to emigration both of farmers and laborers ;
it will disestablish your Church-

"I wish," said Mr. Leicester, pricking up his ears at these
revolutionary forebodings, anci rising, " I had time to discuss
these questions with you ; but really, sir, 1 have not. I
must pray you to excuse me."

"Sir," said the American, kindly, "giv6 me your hand.

A DARK DECEMBER.

139

I'll vamoose. You're an English gentleman, sir, and I take
your hint. Now, sir, take mine. Yon, as a minister of the
Lord, whose follower I am, though not in your track, I
reckon, con-sider what I've said : and mark my words, sir,
before a year is gone you will be forced to look at these
things from a new point of view, and then, sir, if Jehoiachin
Settle is still ga-loping around this infatooated countr)'^, you
may send for him to help you to solve your difficulties."

With these words the stranger grasped the Vicar's delicate
fingers in his huge, chilling hand, passed through the same
ceremony with Mr. Linkboy, and, piloting his long form
with masterly ingenuity, reached the gig and drove away.
The Curate had taken a fancy to the grotesque visitor, and
afterwards meeting him again in the village spent several
hours with him at the inn.

CHAPTER VIII.

A DARK DECEMBER.

Bv the time Hodge was able to go about, December had
come. The dismal, long, cold nights, and the storm-flurried
hours of day ; the icy breath of the north-east wind ; the gray
gaunt skies ; the white frost on blade and bush ; the sleet,
and snow, and chilly rain— all these ushered Want and
Poverty directly into the dread presence of Winter. Scores
and hundreds of laborers in the Cuddlcton di-strict were
now either without work, or were working on half-time. As
Hodge recovered, Mr. Jolly, with a certain touch of English

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140

LITTLE HODGE.

manliness, gave his victim what work he could ; but it was
very little, and he rigidly paid him only for work done.
The Laborers' Union, which had undertaken Hodge's ex-
penses during his illness, were now too pressed by other
claims to do any more for him. He had during his five or
six weeks of high wages saved a few shillings — his only re-
source. The children's needs cried out sharply. The
summer clothing supplied by the Poorhouse scantily pro-
tected their shivering bodies from the cold. Mary's wit was
nonplussed. On some days they had no fire except such as
gathered sticks would make. On some days the only food
eaten in the house was by Little Hodge. That diminucive
youngster exacted Benjamin's mess, spite of his size. So
the days — and the nights! — went on towards the Merry
Christmas ! Then was the time for a short glow of pleas-
ure, when came the gifts of coals, and blankets, and one or
two hearty meals. The district was greatly excited. The
farmers were resolute to use the opportunity to break up
the Union, and they held out threats of eviction, dismissal,
and withdrawal of bounties, unless their laborers would
abandon the combination and sign undertakings foi a year's
labor at a low rate of wages. The men grew fierce in the
face of pressure and starvation. The Union could not cope
with all the demands that were made upon it. Muttered
curses began to give way to acts of retaliation. Threatening
letters were sent. Ricks were burned. Poaching was in-
cessant, and several serious conflicts with keepers aroused
the indignation of both sides. The constabulary was in-
creased and ever on the alert.

THE END CROWNS THE WORK.

141

Thus while the over-wealthy nation was rejoicing in the
incredible prosperity of the closing year, and everywhere
young and old, in church and homestead, were preparing to
celebrate the feast of peace and good-will toward men, the
rich rejoicing with their wealth, the poor hopeful that some
crnmbs of Merry Christmas comfort would fall to them from
the rich man's table, over the doomed district there gath-
ered a dismal cloud, and on the hearts of its employers and
laborers brooded the awful spirit of Cain. O Angel of
Goodness and Mercy ! in pity of men's weakness, in remem-
brance of the Christ-mass time, from thy Heavenly seat and
with thy shining wand canst Thou not — wilt Thou not — dis-
perse these shades and omens of inhumanity, malignity, and
despair !

• - CHAPTER IX.

' . THE END CROWNS THE WORK.

Mr. Bvrton's state of mind was as hard to analyze as its
experience was unenviable. He had, to begin with, thrown
himself with all his energy on the side of selfishness, and in
such a case conscience must always be soothed or vindicated
with very strong stimulants. He bad suffered, and was suf-
fering, with poor Emily Byrton, the loss of an association he
highly valued, and his mortification was the greater that Sir
Henry Fwbank "had taken deep offence at the Squire's treat-
ment of his son. The defection of his friend the Vicar was
another trial to his faith in himself. But in propo* tion to the

"WPPSPI

^■■I^IWiP"— "9^

142

LITTLE HODGE.

untowardness of these incidents grew the stubbornness of
Mr. Byrton's resistance to the Union. He credited that
with all his mortifications. Consequently his bitterness in-
creased as his position grew weaker, and as his conscience
became less satisfied with what he was doing. Emily Byr-
ton's sad face looked sadder as the day of Christian hope
drew nigh. This was a constant reproach to the Squire —
one that tested his resolution and touched his heart most
keenly ; so keenly that by a curious perversion of his moral
feelings he used it to stay his misgivings under the belief
that he was a martyr. If one can only get himself to be-
lieve thaty he may justify a murder, at all events to his own
mind.

Emily Byrton always looked forward to the Christmas
week as a time of peculiar pleasure. Then it was that from
all parts of her father's large estates came trooping up to
Byrton Hall the men, women, and children of their cottier
tenantry; and it had for years been her part to distribute,
amid glad laughter, gay smiles, and cheery cries of " Merry
Christmas " in bass and treble voices, such gifts as the people
could carry away. And there, always loudest and merriest
of the throng, the Squire used to stand and enhance the
pleasure of his gifts with kindly words. It had become so
fixed a part of life she could not conceive that her father
would intermit it ; but when the week drew nigh, and she
saw that the usual preparations were not made, the great bale
of blankets from London did not come, and Nicholas the
butcher had not received the generous order for a shop-fuli of
joints, Emily looked in her father's face almost with fear. It

THE END CROWNS THE WORK.

143

shone towards her, but she felt it terrible that his heart should
have so changed.

" O Papa ! " she said naively, " what have these poor peo-
ple done to make yoi so dreadfully stem ?"

The Squire's face grew pale, and it was only with a power-
ful effort that he restrained an outbreak of temper and
turned away. But he could not shake the words from his
heart.

Christmas-eve had come : erst the night of nights of all
the year, from the great Hall to the smallest cottage on the
Squire's estate. Black clouds had gathered all the day, and
came drifting with fearful rapidity in huge tangled heaps
across the heavens. The wind shrieked dismally among the
leafless branches, and those who faced it under that gloomy
sky felt its desponding influence penetrate to their inmost
souls. Everything was done within Byrton Hall to make
the eve as gladsome as usual — the early dinner, the yule log
in the hall, the evening games and dances ; but there was a
deadness throughout the festivity that no effort could galvan-
ize. Emily, always the life of such a time, though she strug-
gled to forget herself, was nerveless and distrait ; the Squire
went absently about, waking up to episodes of fim in pain-
ful spasms ; Mrs. Byrton, watching with a woman's eyes and
feeling with a woman's heart, wondered whereunto all this
was coming. When the hour for bed arrived, the Squire
yawned most gratefully ; and Emily, snatching a candle and
forgetting her adieux, ran off to hide her head in the pillGV7
and drench it with her tears.

Dour and desperate was the night. How the storm

V -~

144

LITTLE HODGE.

raved and the clouds drave ! How did the tyranny of Dark-
ness oppress the scene, made more weird-like by breaks in
the drifting masses that now and then opened and showed
great jagged-edged tracts of dingy yellowish sky ! The poor
waits shivered and trembled and sang out their quavering
melodies in quaint discordance from behind any shelter they
could find ; the fierce wind taking up the notes and carrying
them, transformed into shrieks and yells, away into the in-
fernal gloom. A night, it was, long remembered — when
jovial guests returned home saddened by its terrors, and
many a son of Want lay down and yielded his life to the
demon of Despair. A night the Squire never forgot ; sleep-
less, anxious, and sullen — when his own heart reflected the
distracted ravings and gloomy spirits of the scene without.
When at length he sank into a troubled sleep it was a pleas-
ure to be wakened by the clear, merry voices of his chil-
dren singing a Christmas anthem on the staircase, while
Emily made the organ peal out sweet notes of melody in
honor of the baby Saviour.

Uneasy was the morning ; fitly following such a night.
The wind veered round, and came sweeping along icy and
hard. Dark, heavy clouds, massing themselves to the
North-east, rolled up raggedly and wildly over the hemi-
sphere ; and there was a keen, rushing eagerness in the cold
draughts that blew out of the cheeks of those grim North-
eastern monsters of the air. Here and there, where through
the night a few flakes of snow had fallen, they lay driven
into ruts and nooks, where they seemed glad to nestle from
the cruel breeze. How it soughed through the leafless

til

THE END CROWNS THE WORK.

145

branches of the great elm at the end of the Hall, and
sang through the lofty old pines that stood on the knoll
behind the stables, and rasped about the corners and the
angled chimneys of the houses, and spirited through every
crevice, like a cold, harsh, angry Genius with a savage
voice !

The Squire was specially uncomfortable. His breakfast
showed that the air was no tonic to his appetite. He drew
away from the table, and with his hands in his pockets stood
looking out of the big bay-window over the dim landscape,
across the lawn and the distant dark-ribbed plough-fields,
away beyond Truscott's cottages, as far as his eye could
reach for the trees that studded the view, over property all
his own, in a most cheerless mood for a great landed pro-
prietor on a Christmas day.

By and by, when they had all trooped off to church, the

Squire went into his library, and drawing the arm-chair

opposite the fire sat there with his feet on the fender. Wind

and cold and deadness and dimness might tyrannize without,

but could they reach the cosey man sitting in that cosey

spot — there in the heat, there in the dancing, fantastic light

which so saucily hissed and flickered away with its flaming

tongues in scorn of the dull monsters outside? Yes; for

the Squire looks nervously round to see where the draughts

come from, and draws nearer the genial warmth. There he

sits, moodily gazing into the bright, merry blaze. In at his

ears, in spite of him, surges a torrent of thoughts he vainly

strives to stem. Are those the cries of children ? Unheard

voices fi-om unseen mouths, piercing through and sweeping
10

T-fsa^m

"^^mmmrn

mm^

146

LITTLE HODGE.

away the obstacles his will feebly opposes to them, over-
master his soul. At length he becomes quite helpless and
ceases to offer resistance.

" I wish I had gone to church," says he, getting up and
looking out of the window. At the moment his favorite re-
triever, Nelly, swept round from the back of the house, and
after a turn on the lawn came up to the familiar casement,
and seeing him there, put her forepaws on the sill, whining
and yelping, half in joy and half in excitement.

"Why, lass," said he, opening the window, through which
she leaped in a moment, "what's the matter with you? A
merry Christmas, lass ! "

Nelly licked his hand, but took no further notice of the
salutation. She whined as she moved uneasily about the
room.

" Hi, lass ! Dost thee want a run then ? Egad ! a good
idea. I'll shake this fit off me in a blow up the hill."

In less than a minute the Squire was out, crossing the
lawn, the dog circling about him with signs of joy.
. " Ha ! lass, it was this you wanted, eh ?"

To the left now, over the stile, up through that huge
rising fallow-field, up to where now glancing on the right he
could see stretched out a large portion of his domain, and
the village church, and Farmer Jolly's house, and the farm
buildings, and the little row of cottages where the Union
was born. He turned his back upon it. O;. again over
the turnip field, and now through the gate, whence a path
leads to the right close by the keeper's cottage, while the

'Vfll.1

■*

THE END CROWNS THE WORK.

147

ver-
and

and
te re-
, and
ment,
lining ,

which
1? A

of the
DUt the

good
ing the

It huge
ight he
in, and
he farm
Union
,in over
a path
,ile the

broad track goes on straight through the woods. Nelly
takes the path.

"What! Steering for Robert Kane's, lass? What drt
thee up to ? "

The path is steep and the Squire pufTs up hardly against
the wind, but it seems not to sweep his dull thoughts away.
Now he has reached Kane's cottage, and the gamekeeper
hearing the dog's bark has come out and pulls a lock to the
Squire at the door, and there is Bessie Kane curtseying
within.

" A merry Christmas, sir ! "

" What ? — Oh ! Kane, is it you ? Ah ? a merry Christmas
to you ! " And not noticing the smiling housewife he passes
on, absently following the dog, who precedes him eight or
ten yards. Over the short-clipped, clumpy grass where the
hares love to feed, and in and out among the tufts of furze,
and now traversing the copse, and so on into the wood
went dog and man, treading the dingy, cold-crisped leaves,
and listening to the miserable wailing of the wind through
the naked branches. The old sportsman's eye is never off
his dog, and he sees her suddenly turn out of the path and
dash inco the underwood. There he hears her barking and
sniffing.

" Quiet, Nelly, quiet ! Heer, lass ! "
. But Nelly barks more furiously than ever. Anon she
runs towards her master and then goes whining back.

" Ay, ay, Nelly ! what is it ? "

Ay 1 Squire, drop your stick and clasp your hands in

horror as you look down upon it ! — IV/ia/ is iti What are

148

LITTLE HODGE.

these strange drops upon the brown, ghastly leaves, and
what is that upon its face stretched out stiff and stark under
the nut-bush? Turn it over and shudder as the blood-
stained steel drops from the dead fingers, and you see
above the terrible gash that hand and steel have made, the
livid face of poor John Hodge. Lay hold of the blue
fingers in your frenzy and rub for your life. Feel the
chilled temples and lay your hand, knowing not what you do,
over the still heart, and pull it away with a crimsoned palm.
Cry out, Squire, in the anguish of your soul —

" Hodge ! Hodge ! "

There is no answer from the lifeless lips. How the dog
whines !

"Hollo! Holl-0-0-0!"

On with the wind flies the strong, clear voice — down on
the Christmas wind with a long, wailing, melancholy strain ,
down to the cottage where Kane and his wife sit wondering
what can have come to the Squire ; down the cottage
chimney to the quick ear of the keeper.

"Theer's maaster a callen, Bess, an' purty loud too.
Harkee ! agaen ! God save us, Bess I what's oop, girl ? "

Here is the keeper running with all his might, his hat off
and his gun snatched from the rack on the wall.

The dog rushes out to meet him.

" Kane, Kane ! Look here ! "

Ay ! Kane, you too may well turn pale at the sight !

For last evening as you were ranging home from the Byrton
Arms to your early Christmas supper, you met this man
now lying gashed and dead before you. furtively slinking

THE END CKOWNS THE WORK.

149

across the open towards the wood, and like a menial as thou
art, didst jibe him and threaten him with a beating for his
trespass, in these words —

" Be off. Jack Hodge ; be off, I tell ee, or I'll gi'e thee a
racketing ! Thee'rt a shirking vagabon' ! " The last words
John Hodge heard from his brother man.

The Squire has thrown his handkerchief over the face,
and now essays, with the keeper's help, to lift the body.

" To your cottage, Kane."

Kane sees that the Squire's rubicund face is marked in
livid patches, and his hps are close together. The master
makes an effort to take his part in the lift, but suddenly
stops, and sitting down beside the body covers his face with
his hands, and without affectation of concealment weeps as
men seldom weep. The sturdy gamekeeper, aghast and
troubled, turns respectfully away, drawing the cuff of his new
velveteen coat across his eyes to its irreparable damage.
And Nelly, on her haunches, sits and cries too, the big tears
coursing down her innocent nose. The cold wind keeps up
its incessant requiem.

O Soul of John Hodge I canst thou, up there with the
singing Angels, where resentment is unknown and revenge
is forgotten, look down and see these repentant tears?

At length the Squire spoke —

" Better carry it straight to his cottage, Kane. I can't
help you. Go and get help : I will stay here."

The gamekeeper sped with all his might, half afraid to
leave his master by the body. But the Squire sat and gave
rein to his thoughts. They were not verj' many minutes,

'fpi

150

LITTLE H0D31&.

yet they were golden minutes to the Squire ; a bitter but a
wholesome time. From them he stood up at length with a
serener face, as he heard the crackling and leaping of fast-
coming feet, and the horror-stricken men broke in on the
scene. Kane noticed that his master spoke in his old
manner.

He walked on before the melancholy procession down
over the head of the hill, the way the man must have come
last night, and reached the cottage in advance of the bearers.
In at John Hodge's door went the Squire without knocking.
In at John Hodge's door swept with him the keen, rude
wind, and rushed fiercely towards the empty chimney. In,
too, came Nelly, sniffing suspiciously the doubtful air.
Chill, dark, damp — everything precisely as Hodge had left it
the night before : bare floor, and walls, and table, and the
open cupboard, with some crumbs on the shelf, and no more.
A small heap of dried lea s and sticks piled on the hearth,
the last fatherly work of the dead. The Squire's heart sank
within him. Can he have murdered the children'} Up the
narrow stair he dashed like a madman, and burst into the
garret. Thank God ! there is a cry or two ; but a scene for
Christmas morning that might make even Parochus, who is
a corporation and has no soul, sorry. Mary sits in the cor-
ner, her eyes shut, her face pallid, and in her nerveless arms
Little Hodge, wrapped in the petticoat she has taken oif in
the hope of keeping the sparks of life in his tiny form.
Tummas next her is asleep, and round the two cluster, some
sleeping, one or two awake, but seemingly incapable of
motion, the brothers and sisters. They have been without

THE END CROWNS THE WORK.

151

food or fire these thirty hours. Nelly ran and licked the
face of the sleeping girl. She did not move.

" Good God ! " said the Squire, dancing about " Here, I
say, all of you, wake up ! wake up ! Merry Christmas, I
say ! Here, what's your names ? Mary, John, Thomas,
Jane, Susan, Betsy ! " — at the top of his voice.

Tummas woke up, with one or two others, who at the
sight of the alarming stranger began to cry. Mary did not
move.

" Bless my soul ! " said the Squire, feeling her cheek.
And away he goes down the stairs and out of the cottage,
and there he is running across the old meadow to Farmer
Jolly's house, Nelly stopping to guard the children, and the
sad bearers as they draw nigh silently thinking that he is de-
ranged. In a few moments he and the farmer and one or
two women are back in the cottage with wine, food, milk,
and a good bundle of wood. Mrs. Nollekens, aroused by
tlie disturbance, comes in with Tim, and when she hears the
news, her heart having smitten her for the fatal words she
oncft uttered to the dead, she has gone off into vicious hys-
terics, shrieking and kicking on the floor with penitent vigor.
The body has been laid on the table, covered with poor
Robert Kane's velveteen coat. He, in his shirt-sleeves, is
kindling a fire.

" Here, Jolly, up here ! Up here with the wine, quick,
like a good girl ! Look out there, Nollekens, stop that
wife of yours ! Can't you sit on her head, and cut the tra-
ces, eh ? " cried a horsey old gentleman, as he vanished up
the staircase. " Not a word about the father," he whispers

>f^

Mil 1, 11 .. ]"~ »l ! S

152

LITTLE HODGE.

r
r

on the stairs. Then he and the farmer lay Mary on the
bed, and gently give her a spoonful of wine, and so one ^y
one the frozen little ones are roused from torpor and made
strong enough to move about. The table, with its dread
weight, is transferred for a short time into the shed in the
yard ; and while a messenger goes to the Hall for a waggon-
ette the eleven little ones are warmed at the now cheery
fire. Mrs. Nollekens, restored without the heroic remedy
suggested by the Squire, and Mrs. Jolly, who has brought
some clothes, wash the little hands and faces, and make the
children all look as decent as may be, the Squire sitting by
and looking on with a beaming face, all the livid spots gone
from it and not a cloud to be seen in his clear blue eyes.
And Nelly, stretching her neck towards the grateful fire,
nods and winks a sagacious approbation.

Here is the waggonette ; and there among the warm rugs
they bury the children. Little Hodge, whose rigid state
gives some anxiety, actually borne in the Squire's own arms.
And so they drive away, carrying off with them the tempor-
ary sunshine from that dismal home, and leaving the sad
watchers by the awful dead.

And who is this who has slipped round to the back,

and having uncovered the face a moment and taken one
glance, has turned away and is walking up and down the
stony yard, wringing his great strong hands and repeating,
** God forgive me ! God forgive me ! I've made a mistake.
God forgive me ? " Ah ! Farmer Jolly, thank God you see
your blunder and are sorry for it ! Are there not minister-
ing spirits waiting to bear away to Heaven the sighs of a

THE END CROWNS THE WORK.

153

broken and repentant heart, and may they not come back
laden with Christmas blessings even for thee ?

Up the long avenue towards the Hall goes the heavily
laden waggonette, and see there on the steps and in through
the open door what a glad crowd is waiting ! As the car
riage draws up there is a great cheer, and that beautif .,
golden-haired girl runs forward and takes into her arms r -^
descending Squire, and with laughing and crying eyes says —

" Oh ! you {fear old father ! Give me the baby ! "

And so they are all lifted out, each one taken in charge
by some willing convoy and piloted into — the kitchen ?
"No," cries the Squire, "into the drawing-room." And
there is such a scurrying of housemaids, and consultation of
nurses, and turning out of wardrobes, and general scouring
and rehabilitation of Hodge's children, that the day is far
gone before any one thinks of settling down to quiet or
amusement.

Emily, having deposited her charge in the nurse's hands,
had gone to her father in the hall, and taking hold of each
lappel of his coat, had looked straight into his eyes and
said —

" Father "

" Stop ! " said he, kissing her ; " I know what you're going
to say. Send Williams with the bay mare."

And Williams had sped for love of his young mistress all
that long ten miles, and hot with speed and galloping there
jumped down at the door young Henry Ewbank — jumped
down into the open arms of Emily Byrton, who, not being

SE3=

^^m

154

LITTLE HODGE.

at Ujiji, did not care a bit for the butler and the groom, and
as she put her arms round his neck said —

" O Harry, thank God you've come back to me at last ! "
" Hi ! you two young people," said a jolly voice from the
top of the steps, " what are you doing there ? You ought
to be ashamed of yourselves."

All the incidents of that merry evening I cannot attempt
to tell. The dinners that were eaten, the friendships that
were sworn between juvenile aristocrats and little snobs,
the rioting in the dining-room, the peeping and hiding and
shouting in the hall, the Squire's animation and boisterous
glee, the joy that beamed in Emily's face, the self-satisfied
humor of that young prig Ewbank, and the sweet content-
ment that played upon the gentle features of the mother, as
she tliankcd God her husband and her children were them-
selves again ; all this and more I might enumerate, but not
describe. Mr. Leicester came over in the evening, having
heard the news ; and by and by, when the whole party were
weary with pleasure, the clergyman drew them together and
with faltering voice, as he thanked God for His goodness to
them all, besought for them His mccy. And then they all
went out to the organ in the hall, and Emily in rapt ecstasy
played while they sang ouJ vith all their hearts the noble
strains of the Christmas Anthem — Peace on Earth : Good-
will TOWARD Men.

mmammmf

PART V.

UNIONS AND COMMUNIONS.

CHAPTER I.

YANKEE INTERVENTION.

The Squire frankly owned the change which that Christ-
mas-day had wrought in him. He had pushed repression
to the utmost limit, and its fruit was an apple of Sodom.
Mr. Leicester, whose mind had been greatly agitated by this
fearful crisis of the contention with the laborers, went
heartily with him. Mr. Linkboy was taken into counsel,
and at his suggestion Sammy Stednian was sent for. To
him Mr. Bvrton declared his wish to make an effort to end
the social war now raging in Coddleton, and candidly asked
1 's aid.

"Sir," said Stedman to him, solemnly, "would to God
you had done this at first ! Had masters met men with
reason and kindness instead of passion and revenge, many
heart-burnings and much suffering would have been pre-
vented."

" It is useless, my friend, to regret the past," returned
the other, quietly. " It is not too late to mend. Will /ou
help us to do it ? "

mum

156

LITTLE HODGE.

i V

Forthwith the Squire, supported by Mr. Leicester and
Mr. Jolly, who had taken two of Hodge's children into his
house, set to work resolutely to undo all they had been do-
ing for the past seven or eight months. How hard it is to
fall back and repair in society the evils of so long and
fierce a struggle ! They admitted the difficulties in their
way to be enormous, and the outlet not to be very clear to
them, but they were earnest and they were hopeful.

After considering a variety of plans which had been sug-
gested from different quarters, the Squire and Sammy Sted-
man agreed that the proper thing to do was to call a joint
meeting of farmers and laborers to consider whether any-
thing could be done to put their relations on a better foot-
ing. The response to the summons was hearty, both on
account of the notorious facts that had led to it and of the
impatience of both parties to end the existing state of
things.

The Squire took the chair and in a few touching sen-
tences described the cause of the change that had come over
his mind, and besought them from both sides to approach
the subject with toleration and good-feeling. Then Mr.
Leicester spoke, and then Sammy Stedman spoke. The
latter, not offensively, warned the farmers at the outset that
the Union was an established thing, and could not be dis-
solved : that is, permanence must be the basis of any settfe-
ment " A Union," he said, " is the laborer's only safe
standing ground. To some extent, also, it should be the
farmer's assurance of a good footing. The Union cannot
be given up ; but you can, if you will, make it a different

mmm

YANKEE INTERVENTION.

157

thing from what it will be if it must be your antagonist in-
stead of your associate."

The Squire asked the farmers to concede this. " I re-
gard the Union, since I have looked fairly at its rules, and
have had its objects explained to me by Stedman, with
altered feelings. I can see how reasonable it is that the
individual laborer should desire to have his position strength-
ened by association with his fellows — a feeling he holds in
common with almost every trade or profession. The dan-
ger, of course, is that the laborers may use the power this
combination gives them to tyrannize over the capitalists.
But just as education and the teaching of experience have
made other associations reasonable in the use of their com-
bination, so these will learn that, if they exceed the rules of
right, they cannot do it with impunity. In the long run
their exactions will return upon themselves with disastrous
effect. We are not without weapons to meet them, if it
comes to that ; but what occurs to me is this — with a real
desire on both sides to live on a good understanding, nfe^ it
ever come to that 1 "

The problem having been stated in this way and in this
spirit, they all went to work to look for a solution. Hope-
less work, you may say, Mr. Political Economist, but at all
events more hopeful than fighting their way to no end. The
meeting was held in the great room of the Byrton Arms at
Coddleton. Behind the gentlemen who sat around the
Squire, at the upper end of the room, was a door. Jusit as
the meeting was about to buckle to the question this door
began slowly to open. Presently, at least a foot above the

^58

LITTLE HODGE.

level at which the head of an ordinary human being might
be looked for, there appeared a face — such a face as the
assembled three hundred had never -seen. A smile slowly-
radiated over its curious features, and a clear, though nasal
voice, said —

" I guess I don't intrude, if I come in, eh ?"

The apparition was altogether so unexpected and so rare,
that the good-humored burst of laughter which greeted
Jehoiachin Settle, as he developed his entire length from
behind the door, was excusable. He joined in it himself.

" I ain't a Little Hodge,'' he remarked aloud. " Nv),
sirree ! In my country we don't have babies born the sizt
of dormice ; and I admit I've grown con-siderable since I
first took air."

When they came to discuss the matter in hand, sucli
questions as these were raised :

1. Is the district overstocked with labof, and if so how

is this to be remedied ?

2. How should men be paid — by time, by piece-work, in

mon^y, or partly with perquisites, cottages, allot-
ments, etc. ?

3. How arc you to meet the difference of capacity

in laborers? What is to become of the old,
weakly, half-paupers, etc.?

4. Can farmers afford Iiigher wages ?

5. Is it necessary or expedient to give the laborers

any share of profits ? If so on what basis ?

fmni

YANKEE INTERVENTION.

159

6. Can co-operation be successfully introduced into, ag-

riculture, and how far will it act as a remedy ?

7. What means, artificial or otherwise, are to be used

to diminish over-supply, if existing ? (Emigration,
migration, etc.)

And so on. They evidently had more in hand than they
could determine at one meeting.

The Squire, after a while, suggested that they were not
then in a position to discuss these questions fairly. They
had no sufficient data. They ought first to have particulars
of the number of employers and laborers in the district ; the
number for whom employment existed, either constant or
casual ; numbers in receipt of out-door relief; numbers in-
capable of work; expenses of poor relief; information as to
modes of farming and amount of production, etc., etc. In
fact, it was clear that before a new combination could essay
to solve the problem at all they must first be in possession
of the facts. Alas ! it had taken a long and sore journey to
bring them to this obvious point ! They elected a commit-
tee to inquire into these matters, and to report thereon, with
recommendations.

Before the meeting broke up Mr. Jehoiachin Settle begged
leave to say a few words.

"My friends," he began, " I'm a Yankee from New York,
raised in Massachoosetts, and 3^ou may en-quire what busi-
ness I have to interfere in your family squabbles. Well, the
fact is, that having neither children nor quarrels of my own,
I'm always interfering with other people's ; and as a brother

mnmmm

1 60

LITTLE HODGE.

and a Christian I can't help taking an interest in your
troubles." Then stating his view of the position, he went
on :

"Gentlemen, I reckon this is the all-firedest breeding-
ground on the face of God Almighty's earth. Thar's no hu-
man diggings known to me where cattle and hosses and
men and women can be raised to that pitch of perfection
reached in your country. As far as 1 can o-pine, you're
destined by the Almighty to be a substitoot for Abraham,
whose loins were pretty capacious, I guess, and covered the
earth with a multitood no man could number. You British-
ers appear to me to be doing the same with reasonable
smartness. I calkilate your U-nited Kingdom will be chock-
full in twenty-five years' time, and when that ac-me is
reached I reckon I'd rayther not be around here. You'll
have to thin out your stock, or you'll bust and go into bank-
ruptcy as sure as you're a nation. Well, gentlemen, my
particular hobby is the migration of children. In my coun-
try we've made it answer, and there ain't no reason in life
why you, with all your colonies scattered around the world,
shouldn't make it answer too. You've not only got a sur-
plus on hand — and a precious greedy, exacting surplus it is
— but you've another surplus growing up, and you're going
on breeding another surplus. Well, I start with the growing-
up surplus and thin it out. Sir, first I'll con-tract to take all
your orphans off your hands. Then I'll rcdooce your large
families. You give me a cliild or two out of a family of
ten to thirteen people, and let me take them away, I guess

^^fKmfm^^^m.

YANKEE INTERVENTION".

i6i

I'll T-elieve that family considerable and benefit the children
into the bargain. I'll take me those jooveniles and I'll carry
them to one of your colonies, say Canady, and I'll find me
here a couple of married folks that, for some reason or
other, ain't had the usual interest on their wedding paid
down by the Almighty, and they'll take and keer for one of
those children jest as if they'd had the trouble of having it
themselves. Now, for instance, there's that blessed little
creetur who's raised all this muss. He's about the capacity
of a good-sized straddle-bug. I'll take that child, if you'll
give him to me a few years from now, and I'll plant him in
colonial soil, and on mush and hoe-cake and potato diet
he'll swell and grow into something like a human." Jehoia-
chin concluded thus : — " Sir, I've done a good work in
America, my institoot is flourishing, and now, for the love of
God and my fellow-man, I'm willing to give some of my
days to trying to do the same sort of work for Old England,
if so be you'll let me."

Loud were the cheers among the honest country-folk at
this promise of unarmed intervention on the part of Brother
Jonathan. It was moved and carried by acclamation that
he should be a member of the Committee.

w..^

l62

LITTLE HODGE

CHAPTER II.

A VERY DRY CHAPTER.

The way that Committee went to work, the earnestness
they threw into it, the quantity of information they collected,
the amount of talking and writing they did, was wonderful.
And the report was more wonderful still. I thought at one
time of putting it into an appendix, but the publisher thinks
an appendix to a Christmas story is, like a tail on a human
being, clearly de trop^ and altogether monstrous and un-
usual ; so I put it in a chapter I tself, in order that those
who prefer facts to theories may pass it over if they please.

It showed that the farming in the district was nothing like
what it miglit be ; that the supply of labor was about one-
third greater than the demand could fairly support ; that the
surplus was to a great extent represented by the out-door
relief; that the wages hitherto paid were insufficient to
maintain men and families in decency ; that the result of all
these things was the depreciated quality of labor ; that the
farmers could afford to pay much higher wages to good
laborers } that not only was the excess in supply very great,
but that, considering the number of families of children
" coming on," it promised to be greater ; it reported that a
certain number of the laborers were clearly not capable of
earning a good day's wages, and never would be ; that there
was a decided absence of thrift among three-fourths of the
laborers ; that some of them ought to be placed permanently
on the rates; that the workhouse test should be rigidly en-

A VERY DRY CHAPTER,

163

forced on all paupers, and out-door relief be gradually
stopped, in hope that the measures about to be taken would
reduce to a very small number those who weighed upon the
rates. '

As to relations of employers and laborers, it aftumed that
those relations ought to continue to carry with them the old-
fashioned kindliness and mutuality which had been claimed
for the former system, but based on better grounds; that
the notion of pure dependence on the master's goodwill
should be abandoned, and the relation should rest on the
more practical, rational, as well as more just, principle of
contract ; that perquisites, beer, taihngs, gleanings (which
were a right common 10 all inhabitants, and one every year
lessening in value), should form no part of the system of
pay, but that wages should be estimated at their fair market
value in money. ? ^^

As to laborers' cottages, the report was on the whole
rather in favor of leaving these in the hands of the landlords,
from whom they were to be rented ; the landlords in the
district were recommended to agree on a uniform rent for
their cottages, proportioned to the number of rooms, and a
half acre of land was to go with them, as a rule, when the
tenant desired it. On the cow question the report advised
no general action, buf suggested that in the vicinity of com-
mons, or where pasturage could be hired, association among
the laborers in keeping a common dairy, and distributing
the milk among themselves, would be more practical than
an attempt to give each family the precarious behefit of a
cow of its own. The report, moreover, suggested that by joint

164

LITTLE HODGE.

action among neighboring landlords it might be possible to
meet the difficulties of housing the laborers by laying out
small villages of houses, with allotments near them, conveni-
ent to several estates : this however must be a matter of
pure speculation or convenience.

The report reviewed the proposals for co-operative farm-
ing and industrial partnerships. It spoke highly of both, and^
as poor Farmer Truscott was going through the Court, and
his farm was vacant, it was suggested that an experiment in
co-operation might be made upon it. Industrial partnerships
were also recommended, when a fair agreement as to the
standard of the labor-wage should be first arrived at, and the
work be done on the condition that the laborer should risk
the profit on his labor as the employer did on his capital.

The report significantly but vaguely said that the present
conditions of the tenure of land were unsatisfactory.

The Committee examined the subjects of the distribution
and proportion of wages. It adverted to the difficulty, in
dealing with a great number of laborers, of ascertaining their
proportionate value. Two methods of meeting this were
mooted : one the adoption of a system of contracts, with
gangs of laborers under some recognized leader, leaving the
men to apportion the wages among themselves ; the other
the adoption of piece-work wherever practicable : the latter
was strongly recommended.

Lastly, as to the excessive supply of laborers, present and
prospective, the Committee advised that any association to
be formed should keep itself advised of the state of the dis-
trict, and should form a society for migration and emigra-

LITTLE PILGRIMS.

165

tion ; and they reported very favorably on Mr, Jehoiachin
Settle's proposal that orphan children and others whose pa-
rents were willing should, with the co-operation of an insti-
tute which he proposed to establish in Ottawa, be sent out
to Canada to be placed out among farmers, shopkeepers,
and others who would take them. A scheme for boarding
out in the same way at home was also approved.

Such was the report made as the first result of an attempt
to solve the difference between masters and men — a report
unquestionably containing crudities, and suggestions that
needed to be tested by experience ; but which had this ad-
vantage, that it recognized the impossibility of finding any
single specific, and rested its aims on a number of possible
means of relief, and on a general combination to apply them.
In this light the mere attempt thus to formulate remedies
was of real importance. The hardests knots in many a
social problem often are to be found less in the circum-
stcances themselves than in the tone, temper, and wishes of
those who profess to be engaged in their solution.

CHAPTER III.

LITTLE PILGRIMS.

Years have passed since that grave Christmas-tide. Ten
years next Christmas will it be since John Hodge cut the
tangled skein of his own sorrows and his brethren's difficul-
ties together. On a June morning, very early, there is un-
usual excitement at the Coddleton railway-station. There

1 66

LITTLE HODGE.

is a group of little people of /arious heights, and in different
stages of joy or sorrow, who are the objects of painful ex-
citement to a crowd of meo, women, and children. Mr.
Leicester stands with them, and now and then speaks a
cheering word to some down-hearted parent or friend.
There is Mr. LInkboy in his mushroom hat — not the one, I
hope, of years agone — with a bag strapped round his
shoulders as if for a journey. He has grown thinner, and
there is a hectic flush upon his cheek. High above them
all towers the form of that quaint but ac-tive citizen, Jehoia-
chin Settle. He takes out his watch, as he puts a large
piece of spruce gum between his teeth. , v -m

" Children and good folks," he says, " the cars are tele-
grammed, and you haven't over two minutes to con-elude
your hugging and crying. Then I guess we'll get away for
Canaan, and swop tears for smiles. Now look spry with
your hydraulics, for I guess it's your last chance."

Now, amidst cheering, and weeping, and God-bless-you's,
Jehoiachin "fixes" his party in "the cars," and the last he
lifts in is a little fellow of diminutive proportions, who hangs
about the neck of a comely young woman.

" Go-go o-od -by, Mary ! " sobs the little man.

" Good"by, Little Ben ! God bless ee, my dear I Doan't
ee forget Meary, wull ee ? " . . . .

"All in I reckon?" shouts Mr. Settle. "Now then,
young uns, strike up 'We're bound for the land of Ca-

naan.

» n

And so, amidst cheers, and wavings of hands, and shak-
ings 01 handkerchiefs, while Mr. Leicester stands with his

ITf

LITTLE PILGRIMS.

167

hat off bov/ing a dignified but hearty adieu, the train glides
off, while Jehoiachin Settle and his convoy sing with all
their might •

"0 Canaan, bright Canaan,

We're bound for the land of Canaan ;
O Canaan is a happy land,
- . We're bound for the land of Canaan."

The Curate, as secretary, manager, and factotum of the
local Emigration Society, accompanies this, the fourth com-
pany that has gone from Coddleton, as far as Liverpool.
There is a melancholy gladness in his face as he talks with
Jehoiachin Settle about the future of these little ones. The
American, looking into his eyes, knows that this will be the
last company to be set rpon its journey by Mr. Linkboy.

Here they all are on the Mersey, scrambling out of the
little tender into one of the great Canadian steamships that
is swinging in the tide, each one receiving a kiss and a bless-
ing from Mr. Linkboy ; and then Jehoiachin looks under the
mushroom hat, and, unable to restrain himself, folds the
Curate up helplessly for a moment or two in his huge arms.
Squeezing the white hand in hii bony, brown paw, he says,
with glistening eyes :

"Brother ! On the other side of Jordan, brother ! Good
by."

— The lines are cast off, the great vessel shivers for a
moment with a mighty convulsion, groans i*^ her inner
depths a mighty groan, and, with a sound of rushing and
splashing water, begins to glide away from hci t»ny lom-

i68

LITTLE H0D(;E.

panion. On the i)addlc-box below stands the Curate ; on
the foredcck above, striving to catch a last glimpso of him,
stand the children. They raise a shrill cheer. And see,
Jehoiachin Settle has lifted Little Hodge upon his lofty
shoulders, and the tiny hand is viraving a handkerchief. The
smaller steamer rapidly returns, the larger gradually grows
indistinct down a long vista of sunlit water, but tne Curate
is dreaming a dream of a hopeful soul borne away from the
terrors of its early days and the despondency of itf native
life to a land of hope and premise.

As he stepped from the boat, and passing over the pier
took his way through the dingy resorty of trade, and anon
past awful shades, where vice and cru le and wretchedneiiS
cowered from the lighi of day, he noted them not. There
seemed to me to be a light about him. Methought he
walked as one that walketh on silver clouds. And before
his eyes a hand of sonie unseen One seemed to wave a
shining scroll, whereon were these wo*ds :-— Forasmuch as

YE HAVE DONF IT UNTO ONE OF THE LEA.3T OF THESE LITTLE
ONES, YE HAVE DONE IT UNTO Me.

CHAPTER IV.

A MIRRY CHKISTMA5I.

Christmas has come. Ten years to day since Hodge'f
dead body did what living Hodge could never have done.
The rime and hoar of Time arc settling down upon the heads,
tliough not upon the hearts — thank God, they are green an j

mmm

KilJJ

HB»i

H-~, .-,.-«»-■

A MERRY CHRISTMAS.

169

flJ

fresh as ever 1 — of the Parson and the Squire. Christmas-
day ! The great building of Coddleton Union gave signs of
animation and festivity. Here were squires* carriages and
waggonettes discharging their freights of brisk-looking gen-
tlemen, old and young ; jovial farmers jumping out of their
traps or swinging off their horses ; and a crowd of men, all
neatly dressed, amongst whom the gentlemen mingled famil-
iarly, with a loud and oft-repeated " Merry Christmas." 5

By and by, as a great bell rings out, they all press in at the
Union door. Aye ! rub your eyes. Master ! Is this Cod-
dleton Union ? They are turning from the hall into the
woman's wing, where poor Mary Hodge and many another
like her had, in giving birth to new lives, paid the penalty of
their own. But all that used to be here m her day is changed
and gone. The room where Little Hodge was born does
not exist. It has merged in a great hall — the hall of the
" Coddleton Agricultural Society," of which sq 'iies, farmers,
and laborers are indifferently members. The poor old Poor-
law Union has fallen upon bad days. Five or six years ago
they were obliged to reduce its accommodation one-half;
and now the unfortunate Mr. Mee rules over its mutilated
remains. Many who used to live upon the Union are now
living by their own honest labor, and some of them are here,
waiting with tremendous appetites for grace to be said over
the substantial dinner laid down in the Coddleton Agriail-
tural Hall. _^ -^

Sydney Byrton, Esquire, is standing at the head of the
centre table, and on his right is Sir Walter Waggington,
Bart., M.P., his genial nose aglow with pleasure. But look

'*r

170

LITTLE HODGE.

there ! They have been waiting for the chaplain ; and now
coming up the hall to take their places on the le'"t of the
chairman are the Vicar of Hankerley and the Coddleton
Methodist minister, Mr. Roger, arm-in-arm. And if you
look round the room you will see other parsons ("^heir curates,
no doubt, engaged in praying away dutifully at afternoon
service), and some " Primitives," and a Baptist, and a Bible-
Christian or two ; and altogether Peter's sheet seems to have
been emptied into the great room at Goddleton. Who would
venture to describe the eating, or the talking, or the good-
fellowship, toned down by the spirit of tlie day, at that won-
derful banc^uet ? Not I, I warrant you.

When dinner is over, and the Reverend Mr. Roger has re-
turned thanks, devoutly but at length, "the Report" is
called for, and Sanuiiy Stedoian is the man who gets up to
read it. It is too rosy. Were he net a te-^totaller we should
say he had written it amid visions of bright-hued wines and
generous cheer. He reports the condition of the district
" most satisfactory." Wages are good ; they are now from
fourteen to twenty shillings a week, according to ability,
nearly all by piece-work. The arbitrators have not been ap-
pealed to once during the year to settle a dispute. Sammy
has been all round the district, and is happy to say that not
a single LuKilord in possession has broken the compact en-
tered into six years since to erect a certain number of decent
cottages with corresponding allotments ; the exceptions are
in the case of encumbered and charity estates ; r '' r'^r 'Peo-
ple arc everywhere improving in their care, jt •/j-^M, ti;^ :• '
as yet the general result is not all Samn :ould i av A '• 'X..

A MERRY CHRISTMAS,

171

1 ap-
Umy
It not

It cn-
;ccnt

Is are

neo-

'A.

He hopes for better things when the next generation is edu-
cated. Nearly all the cottages in the district are now held
of landlords, and only the immediate servants of each farm,
who are employed by the year, are tenants from their mas-
ters. Tiie building society has been very successful, and
several men are owners of ground and cottages. Sammy
says " the good effects upon the men is very marked." The
School Board is working " most successfully," and now has
no difficulty in getting the children to school. Mr. Leicester
and Mr. Roger are complimented for their efforts in this de-
partment. The co-operative farm at Charnley has this year
been unusually fortunate. " It is competing with some of

. the best farms in the neighborhood. {Hear, hear. ) They
have purchased a couple of machines, and have been able

*■ this year to hire one of the steam ploughs belonging to this
Association." Sammy adds slyly that " there is reason to
believe the mode of cultivation adopted on the farm is being
copied with advantage on other farms in the district." More
over it was beginning to be felt that the two hundred mem-
bers of the Co-opev.,i\e larm Association formed an ad-
mirable reserve of labor for the farmers of the neighborhood,
who found they could get some of the best hands in the
country to work overtime after they had taken theii shift of
work on the farm. • The report concerning the co-operative
stores in the different villages was enough to make a trades-
man dance with anything but gratification, so I forbv;;ar lo
repeat it. Lastly : " Your Ccminittee have as u.sual kept a
keen eye upon the requirements of the district in the sup-
ply of labor, and as young men and vfomen have come on,

172

LITTLE HODGE.

efforts are made to keep the supply proportioned to the needs
of the locality. In this there has been active co-operation
between your Society and the Agricultural Laborers' Union.
The joint Migration and Emigration Committee have been
promoting the removal of young persons to other parts of
England and to the Colonies, and it has been found that by
disseminating through the districts accurate and practical in-
formation about the Colonies, several families have been in-
duced to save money, and witli a little assistance from your
Committee, to emigrate. The Children's Emigration Com-
mittee, under the personal sup.-rvision of Mr. Jehoiachin
Settle — {great cheering) — and of Mr. Linkboy (" whose
death in the midst of his usefulness, soon after his return
from seeing off the last company, has caused the deepest
grief and is an irreparable loss to our Association " — a state-
ment read and received with emotion), has this year sent out
twenty-two orphans and others with the assistance of the
Guardians of the Poor. One of those sent out was the young-
est child of John Hodge. " The kindred societies through-
out England arc in constant correspondence with your Com-
mittee on various questions of common concern, and steps
are being taken to organize a more thoroughly National
Union of tlie agricultural interests."

This abstract sufficient!) accounts for the loud and pro-
longed cheers which grcittd Samtny as he sat ilown, after
saying in his preachy way that " they must all be thankful to
A kind and merciful God for the measure of prosperity
vouchsafed to them through the past year, and pray Him to

A MERRY CHRISTMAS

173

continue to them the spirit of goodwill and brotherly help-
fulness."

Then the chairman stands up, the toast of ''The Queen"
having been drunk, and proposes, " Success to the Coddle-
ton Agricultural Society," the only other toast permitted,
out of respect for the day. Drank with uproarious honors.

" This day ten years ago, gentlemen," he said, " I under-
went a painful but salutary conversion. It was followed by
that of some of my friends around me. It was a conversion
from a policy of pride, prejudice, passion, and cold-hearted
selfishness to kindliness and humanity — to a sense of what
my friend Stedman has called * brotherly helpfulness.' We
may or may not believe in the infallibility of the laws laid
down by economical philosophers, but we must admit that
even their operation may be greatly facilitated and improved
by the intervention of that element — by the sense of a duty
to be done not to ourselves only but to all about us, in
every relation of life. Fxonomy without charity, using that
word in its widest sense, is as helpless as charity without
economy. To-day we celebrate the results of our change
of attitude. Employers and laborers were in fierce antagon-
ism, and at one time it looked as if the batde must be fought
out to the bitter end. But when we were made alive to the
dreadful possibilities of such a struggle, and set to work to
ward them off, earnestness and goodwill, tempered by prac-
tical sense, brought us to terms. We found our interests
could be reconciled, and now I believe that they are one.
It will please you to know, as an instance of the general
benefit that has accrued from our altered relations, that th«

i I

174

LITTLE HODGE.

Statistics of the coming year are expected to show a larger
yield per acre from this district than from any part of
England. Another significant fact I ought to mention, the
effect of the thrift which the hope of better things has en-
couraged among the men. The farm on my property which
became vacant at Michaelmas by the death of Mr. Golding,
has been taken of me at an enhanced rent by Richard Roe,
formerly a ploughman, and late manager of the co-operative
farm."

Sir Walter Waggington supported the toast in a character-
istic speech, in the course of which he said : " Gentlemen,
I once protested against the introduction of commercial
principles into die relations of agricultural labor ; but I have
found that after the first trial was over these have not only
increased the value of my property, but have tended more
than anything else, under sensible treatment, to bring about
that community of good feeling and advantage which I was
always aiming at, but knew not how to attain on behalf of
my poorer countrymen."

Sammy Stedman then claimed the attention of the meet-
ing for a few moments to a letter he had received the day
before from Canada. It was written, he said, by the little
boy he had mentioned, the son of poor John Hodge, the
first and last martyr of the agricultural revolution.

Dear Sir, —

TV// Mr. Link Boy, aftey we left him in
the big ship it went on day after day for a long time. I was
very sick and throwed up. So did rveryhody else. IVlien

A MERRY CHRISTMAS.

175

we got to. Que- Bee Mister Settle took us all ashore^ and we
went to Montr eeal. Then we came here to Otta-JVa. lam
living with a genleman and lady as came and got Mister
Settle to let them have me. They are very good to me. I
call them papa and mama. She kisses me every night and
morning. I get ever so many ttice things to eat^ and good
clothes to wear. I am grow in a big boy. They dident like
me at firsts Uause I was so little. Now Pm gr m'in they like
me better. -

/ love mama very much. She lias changed my name. J
hope it does not matter. They call me Benjamin Hope.
Hope is their name too. I want you to get this letter before
Chris Mass day^ when all the genlemen have the big dinner.
Please tell them I thank them so much for sending me here.
Tell Mister Lester and Mister Link Boy I pray for them
every night and morning. Mama likes me to^ and says I
am sure by and by to see them in heaven. I hope so. But /
want you to get this letter^ so as to stand up on Chris Mass
day and tell the genlemen from me I am so happy, and I
wish them all K Merrv Chris Mass and a Happy New

YfAR ^^^ Urge rooiK! h»Dd. 'I

- Yours affectionately^

Little Hodge.
P.S, Mama says its the last time lam to sign that name.

Benjamin Hope.

J:
'-I 1 1

And so, Reader, we who set out in Sorrow end in Hope.
The blessed Christmas birth of sadness was the blessed
Christinas seed, growth and fruition of joy for all mankind.

176

LITTLE HODGE

The story of Christmas is ever the same story of life out of
death, of light out of darkness, of love out of hate, of good
out of evil, of hope from despair. So may you read it ever
in your own experience ; and let the precious memories and
sweet, sweet fragrance of the Christmas-time embalm your
life for yourself not only, but also and always for your
brother-man.

i' f

THE END.

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VWnSTIR, N.Y. 145S0

(716) 173-4 SOS

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^K^mm

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DODD & MEAD S CATALOGUE.

Chart.ks, Mrs.

Schonberg-Cotta Family 1 2mo i. 50

** ** " Hampstead edition i.cxs

The Early Dawn. i2mo... 1.50

^ ** " Hampstead edition i.oo

Diary of Kitty Trevylyan 1.50

" ** " Hampstead edition i.co

Winifred Bertram 1.50

" «* Hampstead edition I.oo

The Draytons and the Davenants x.50

*• ** '' Hampstead edic ion i.oo

On Both Sides of the Sea. 1 21110 1.50

** ** *• Hampstead edition i.oo

The Victory of the Vanquished. 1 2 1110 — i. 50

** ** ** Hampstead edition i 00

Sets of the above in boxes.

The \2mo edition^ seven vols., i?icl tiding Victory, reduced

to. $ia5o

The New Uniform Edition,

The Hampstead Editiou, :6ir.o, illustrated, and bound in

black and ijold. Seven vols 7.00

Mary, the Handmaid of the Lord. New edition, iSnio,

red edges I.oo

Poems. New edition, iSnio, red edges 1.25

Watchwords for the Warfare of Life. Selected from the

Writings of Luther. i2ino, bevelled boards 1.75

Song Without Words. Cheaper edition 75

Dana.

Corals and Coral Islands. By J^inies D. Dana, Professor f
o'" Geology in Yale College, author of a System of Mineralogy,
&c. One vol., large 8vo, with colored frontispiece and three

maps, and nearly loo illustrations, cloth extra 6.00

DoT.T.INr.F.R.

Dr. J. J. /. Von Dollingef^s Fables Respecting the Popes \
in the MiJiih' A/^es. Translated by Alfred I-'limimer, together
with Dr. Dolimger's Lssay on the Prophetic Sjiirit and tiie

_ Prophecies of the Christian Era. Transhued for the Aniencan x" —

"^ Edition, with Introduction an<l Notes to the whole work by .; .

Trof. H. H. Smith, D.D. One vol., large i2mo 2.25

Lectures on the Reunion of the Churches. By J. J. L Von f
Dollinyer, D.D., D.C.I« Translated by Henry Nutcombe

Oxenham, M.A. i2mo 1.50

DODD & mead's catalogue.

Fish.

History and Repository of Ftdpit Eloquence, (Deceased
Divines.) By Henry C. Fish, D.D. A new edition. Two
volumes in one. 8vo, over i,2C>o pages, with portraits. Cloth,
extra bevelled boards $5-50

Pnlpit Eloquence of the XlXth Century. With seven large

steel portraits. 8vo. cloth extra, bevelled boards \.<Xi

Fenei.ON.

*"" — "" T TfTfiirimT mm — i

Spiritual Progress or Instructions in the Dii'ine Life of
the Soiil, including Fenelon's Christian Counsel and Spiritual
Letters, and Mme. Guyon's Short and Easy Method of I'rayer,
and Concise View of the Way to God, and Lacombe's Spiritual
Maxims. i2mo, red edges, bevelled boards 1.50

Christian Counsel and Spiritual Letters. In a separate

volume. i8mo, red edges i.oo

Daily Prayer Book.

Daily Prayer Book., The, Vox the use of Families, with f
additional Prayers for special occasions. By various contribu-
tors. Edited by John Sloughton, \y.\y, i2mo, bevelled boards,
red edges 1.50

Gray.

Bible Lore. Chapters on the Rare Manuscripts, Various \
Translations, and Notable Characteristics of the Bible. By
James Comper Gray, author «f '• The Class and Desk," " Topics
for Teachers," &c., &c. One vol., lamo 1.25

Garrett.

Premiums Paid to Experience. Incidents in My Business \
Life, by Edward Garrett, author of "Occupations of a Retired
Life," &c. Twelve illustrations, i2mo 1. 75

The Dead Sin, and Other Stories. By Edward Garrett, f
Illustrated, i2mo. {In preparation.)

Hare .

Wanderings in Spain. By Augustus J. C. Hare, author f
of '♦ Walks in Rome." Finely illustrated. (In preparation.)

Hat.t..

Papers for Home Reading. By Rev. Jolin HaH, D.D.,

of New York. One elegant i2mo, with Portrait 1. 75

HoWciON.

The Character of St. Paul. By j. C. Howson, D.D., f
one of the authors of Connybcare & Ilowson's St. Paul, i2mo.

(In presu)

DODD & mead's catalogue.

Hood .

Lamps^ Pitchers^ and Trumpets. I^eotures on the Voca- f
tion of the Preacher. Illustrated by Anecdotes, Biogi-aphical,
Historicji.1, and Elucidatory, of every order of Pulpit Eloquence
from the great Preacheis of all Ages. By E. Paxton Hood.
A New Edition, two series in one vol., i2mo $1-75

Hutchinson.

Cracow and the Carpathians. By Capt. Alexander H. \
Hutchinson, F.R.G.S. With many illustrations, i2mo, fancy
cloth 2.CX)

Jay.

Prayers for the Use of Families. By William Jay, author f
of ** Morning and Evening Exercises," &c. A New Edition.
i2mo, tinted pap^r, reduced from $1.50 to i.oo

Moffat.

A Comparative History of Religions. By Jas. C. Moffat, f
D.D., Professor of Church History in Princeton Theological
Seminary. One vol., i2mo. Part ist, The Ancient Scriptures. 1.75

Macdonald.

The Book of Ecclesiastes Explained^ Critically and Popu-

larlyy by James M. Macdonald, D.D. i2mo 1.75

Manning, Anne.

Maiden and Married Life of Mary Powell^ the Wife of f
Milton. New Edition. i8mo, red edges 1.25

Cherry and Violet : A Tale of the Great Plague and Fire

in London. i8mo, red edges i.oo

The Household of Sir Thos. More. i8nio, red edges.... i.oo

The Faire Gospeller^ Anne Asketv. i8mo, red edges... i.oo

Jacques Bonneval: A Tale of the Huguenots. i6mo... i-oo

The Spanish Barber: A Tale of the Bible in Spain.

i6mo 1.25

Marriage Certificates.

Marriage Certificates. From a beautiful and chaste steel

engraving. On plate paper, per dozen I.oo

On bank not.: paper, per dozen I.oo

Matker.

The Land of Charity: A Descriptive Account of Trau- f
vancore and its Devil Worship. By Rev. F. S. Mateer, F.L.S.
With over 50 illustrations. i2mo, fancy cloth , . . 3.25

DODD & mead's catalogue.

MiMPRISS.

The Gospel Treasury and Treasury Harmony of the Four
Evangelists. With Scripture Illustrations, Copious Notes and
Addenda, Analytical and Historical Tables, Indexes and Map,
&c. By Robert Mimpriss. Crown 8vo, over 900 pages, cloth
extra, edges 3. 50

The Same, quarto edition, large type, reduced from $11.00

to 17-50

The Gospels i??. Harmony. — Having the Texts of the
Four Evangelists in parallel columns, with Notes, References,
and Chart. By R. Mimpriss.
fPocket Edition, small type, paper, 60 cts. ; cloth 0.75

■ i6mo " larger " cloth 1.25

The Steps of Jesus. The P'our Evangelists combined and ar-
ranged in Chronological Order, and as a Consecutive Narrative.
"With Chart, By R. Mimpriss. i8mo, cloth 75

Pocket Edition, cloth 35

The Path of Jesus. A Map of Palestine, sLowing the
Journeys of Christ, and locating all the Events in the Gospel
History. By R. Mimpriss. For the Wall, mounted on rollers,

size 4x5 feet I.CO

With cloth back, folded for pocket 20

Lessons on the Life of Christ. Harmonized from the Four
Evangelist In Four Grades, with Teachers' Manuals. By
Robt. Mimpriss.

Vol I. Lessons. ) Grade I, 20

forthe \ •* 2, 20

Scholar. ) " 3, 20

Manuals j Grade i, 40

for the \ " 2 40

Studies, 40

Vol. II. Lessons. »jrade i 20

•' 2, 20

•• 3. 20

Manuals. " i 4°

** 2 40

" 3 ' 40

Studies, •••• 40

Newcomb.

The Young Ladie^ Guide to the Harmonious Development

of Character, By Harvey Newcomb. l2mo 1. 50

Pettrs on Baptism. Sprinkling the only Scripture Mode

of Baptism. By Absalom Peters, D. D. i8mo 8$

Pelatan.

21ie Pastor of the Desert Jean J errousseau. Translated f
from the French of Eugene Pelatan. lamo, iUustrated 1. 25

mm ^

f - ' , .

DODD & mead's catalogue /

POR'IER.

T/ie Sciences of Nature versus the Science of Man. By \
Noah Porter, D,D., President of Yale College. One volume,
i2mo , $i.oo

Parker.

The Initiatory Catechism ; an Introduction to the Shortei
Catechism, for Young Children. By Rev. Joel Parker, D. D.
Per loo 3.(X>

Rowland.

The Path of Life. By Rev. H. A. Rowland, D.D.

iSuio . . , 60

Light in a Dark Alley. i8mo

TJie Way of Peace. i2mo

Raleigh.

The Little Sanctuary and other Meditations. By Dr. f
Alex. Raleigh, of London, author of "Quiet Resting Piaces.'"'
i2mo 1.7s

Rauch.

Psychology ; or, a View of the Human Soul, including

Anthropology. By Rev. F. A. Rauch, D.D. i2mo 1.75

Roe.

Barriers Burned Away. A Story. By Rev. E. P. Roc. \
izixio.j. 1.75

Spencer .

A Pastoi^s Sketches. By Rev. L S. Spencer, D.D. A f
New Edition, two vols, in one, large i2mo, with portrait, re-
duced from $3-50 to 2.CX)

Sermons. Vol. i. — Practical 2.00

♦* " 2. — Doctrinal 2.00

" " 3. — Sacramental 2.00

, Any volume sold separately,

Strettoh, Hesba. . ... -. -

Bedd's Charity. A New Edition, with twelve illustra- \
tions I. SO

Max Kromcr : A Story of the Siege of Strasburg.

l6mo v..«^ ,.. 75

Nelly's Dark Days. i6mo... 75

Hester Morlefs Promise, i2mo. (In press), f

^4S i:

i i

- -jf.- ^i gV g -'. ' ^

^ DODD & mead's catalogue/ Ts

Spring's Work s, (Rev. Gardiner. D.D.\

Attractions of the Cross. i2mo $i.oo

The Mercy Seat ,^-

First Things. Two vols 3.50

Glory of Christ. Two Vols 3.00

Short Sermons for the People 1.50

Power of the Pulpit 1.7c

The Contrast. Two vols 3.00

Obligations of the World to the Bible 1.50

Smith .

The Book that Will Suit You; or, a Word for Every-
one. By Rev. James Smith. 32mo, cloth extra, bevelled
boards, red edges 1, 00

Simmons . "

Scripture Mamial. Alphabetically and Systematically
arranged. By Charles Simmons. Designed to facilitate the
findnig of proof texts i2mo, cloth 1.7^

Tyti.kr. _

Margaret: A Story. By C. C. Fraser Tytler, author of f
. *• Jasmine Leigh," &c., &:c. i2mo, twelve illustrations 1.75

ViNET.

Montaine and other Miscellanies. By Alex. Vinet, D.D.

l2mo 1.75

Gospel Studies. By Alex. Vinet, D.D. i2mo. 1.50

Van Oosterzke.

The Theology of the Ne7V Testament ; A Hand-Book for f
Bible Stiulents. By J. J. Van Osterzee, D. D., one of t lie authors
of l^ange's Commentary. Translated by Maurice J. Evans.
One vol., 1 2 mo 1.75

WoRr.oisE .

The Lillingstones of LilUngstone. By Einnia Jane Wor- f
boise. i2mo. Twelve illustrations 1.75

World's Laconics.

World's Laconics, The. On the Best Thoughts of the Best
Authors, in Prose and Poetry. By Tryon Edwards, D.D.
l2mo, cloth extra 1. 75

Weitp>recht.

Miracles of Faith : A Sketch of the Life of Beat6 Paulii^. f
By Mary Weitbrecht. With an Introduction by Cha rles S.
Robinson, D.D. iSmo, red edges. 0.75