A Cornish Sunday to a man of cities is a weariness to the flesh, and a temptation to pray for Monday to come quickly; but for the natives it is a blessed day—a day of feathers and soft down, a day for chewing the cud and being lazy without reproach. The fishermen rarely fish on Saturdays because the sacred idleness of the Sunday may be broken by the salesmen and railway porters—so the day of rest is made to stretch over as much of two days as is worth the having. Farmers are not so well off as fishers, but do what they can in the resting line, and that is something. When we walked through any of the villages on a Sunday we found the people mostly looking over their garden gates, casting glances "up-along," or "down-along," or "athwart," just to see what was going on, and who was moving. They don't like cycles or cyclists on Sundays, and when one comes along all the men in their shirt-sleeves, and all the women helping them to do nothing, squirm as though wounded in a tender place. Every time it is the same—the same inward shrinking from activity on a day of rest. Those who do nothing all the week feel just the same, and lie about, and squat about, indoors, when not outside resting their ample chins upon ample arms upon gates and walls, staring "up-along," and "down-along," and "athwart," watching one another.

Whatever can sleep, sleeps, and the people don't seem properly awake until after tea, when the women make ready for chapel, and the men go after them. The men wouldn't stir but for the women, and the women make a bee-line for chapel. Sunday is given up to preaching and preachers. If you see a man driving on a Sunday, you may put him down for a "local" brother, who works at his trade all the week and is preacher on Sundays. You may know him by a certain smile of goodness that plays around his mouth, for he is going to have a good time. The lay preacher is a by-product of Methodism, and a valuable one in large and scattered circuits too poor for anything but a little chapel of four walls and a brush of whitewash. The Methodist clergy live in the towns and work around the circuit, so the people in the villages see their minister sometimes. The ordained minister is a "rounder," because of his travelling round. The lay, or "local," brothers come in and fill up gaps, and they travel from place to place according to a "plan"—a sort of calendar and time-table combined. It is a system, and it works, and congregations are not wearied with the same face and voice two Sundays in succession. It is good for the lay brother, who can run one sermon for three months without much fear of being bowled out.

The lay preacher is almost a professional once a week, and goes so far as to wear a clerical bowler, but the white necktie is reserved, as a rule, for his betters. There is no written law upon the subject, but it is understood that the white necktie is for the professional "rounder." The lay brother has privileges, and may drive proudly through the land of saints on Sundays and be welcomed, though no one else may let or hire a trap for love or money. The lay brother may not ride a bicycle, which is a pity, looked at from the side of horseflesh.

"I'll drive 'ee to plaize 'ee, but I'd rather not," said a good-tempered landlord, one Sunday, when we wished to pay respects to an ancient monument.

"Why would you rather not?"

"People talk so, and say nasty things to the children."

"But some one has just driven past, and every one smiled and how-de-doo'd him."

"That's oal right. He's goin' to praich."

"But the pony looked tired."

"I shud zay so. Six mile and stiffish hills, and not wance ded ee git out ov th' trap."

"Do you mean that a preacher of the Gospel over-drives his horse?"

"I mane that ef a hill is as stiff as a house a praicher won't never walk on a Zunday—not wan inch of th' way."

Now the vent-peg was out, our host's eloquence ran freely, and much he said of the over-driving and under-feeding of hired horses by lay preachers on Sundays, and of the reluctance which people had to take on the "horse hire" contracts for the Sunday work, because the men who walked the hills fast enough in their weekday clothes would not walk an inch in their Sunday clothes when "planned" for preaching. A false standard of dignity this, which made men cruel. And then the under-feeding? There is no excuse for this. The lay brother is served with all the luxuries of the season at the tables of the brethren on whom he is billeted as a soldier of the cross, and should not forget the hard-working little animal which has dragged him the whole distance, and will have to drag him back again, and the worse the weather the quicker the pace.

Lay preaching is the homely fare of Sunday congregations, who thrive on it because it suits them and sticks in their memories. The "higher criticism" is not wanted by them. Here are a few specimens, picked up in various places.

"You'll never want friends whilst you've God and your victuals."

"Some people's religion is like badly baked dough—put in with the bread and took out with the cakes."

"What the Bible says is true, as true as I've a-got specketty stockings on."

"I do pity the poor ould devil, he lost such a good plaace oal dru catching a cold en es faith. Ess, my dears, he was like some folks along weth we, who get boilin' hot when they'm convarted, and then catch chill dru sittin' en a draught."

"There was wance a great man who gave a great supper to a braave lot of guests. And ded'm come? Not for sure, but they all sent excuses. Wan said, 'I've boughten a piece of land, an' must go an' try et;' an' another said, 'I've boughten vive yoke of oxen, an' must try they;' an' another said, 'I've married a wife, an' must stap to home to try she.'"

"Cast your bread upon the waters, and doan't 'ee luk fust to see whichee way th' wind es blawing. Aw, my dears, there's many a man wean't trust the Loard weth a penny loaf, and so they lose the blessing, like ould Timothy Tack, who spent sixpence to find thrupence."

"Love your neighbour, that is a commandment; but ef you b'lieve in him he's sure to do 'ee!"

"Some people say, 'You can't believe a thing unless you can see and feel it;' but I say you can. Look 'ee now. Here's my hand—fowr fingers an' a thum'. Well, that's fact, edn't et? Now then" (hiding his hand from view), "my hand has got fowr fingers an' a thum', but you can't see'm. Well, that's b'leef. Never say, then, you can't b'lieve what you can't see and feel."

"When I was a boy, a man used to come round crying 'Bellows to mend,' and the schoolmaster our way put up a sign, 'Manners to mend.' Now, I think we might put up that sign in chapels where people come on Sundays trapesing in as though they were going by train, and quattin' down, and spittin' on th' floor, for oal th' world 'twas a tiddly-wink. Them's manners to mend, sure 'nuff, an' would be th' better for mendin', like Jakey Luney's britches, ragged behind."

Sometimes the local brother's homily is very pointed, but no offence is taken. The preacher is one of themselves, and they will take a lot from him in good part. If a stranger were to take the same liberty there would be trouble. Here is a specimen from an address spoken from the pulpit in the free-and-easy manner of every-day conversation.

"You wean't get into heaven just because you've a pious mother or a pious father. Not for sure. Now, I'll tell 'ee a story about a man who deceived moast everybody when he was in the flesh, and he liked chateing so much that he al'ys prayed loudest after he'd tooked in somebody—an' there's more like'n down along weth we now. We'll just give him a name, an' call him Jim Tresidder. He was on the 'plan,' like me, and people said 'twas good to hear him hold forth, and I s'poase 'twas. Jim put a bold face upon it when he marched up to the golden gate, and rapped weth his knuckles upon the little shutter, till Peter looked out. 'Who ar'ee?' asks Peter. 'Doan't 'ee knaw me? Why, I'm Jim Tresidder.' Then he tunied up a bit, and began to sing, 'Heaven is my home.' Now, Peter must have liked the look of Jim—he had sich a pious look weth un, for he stretched forth his hand for the key hanging over his head to open the gate weth. 'I'm oal right now,' thinks Jim, singing louder and louder. 'Avoor I let 'ee in,' says Peter, 'I'll have a look at the book,' and he turned over the leaves till he came to the T's. 'You'm Jim Tresidder of Trevalsa,' ses he. 'Ess,' says Jim. 'Then I'm sorry for 'ee,' says Peter, hanging up the key wance more. Then he showed Jim the book through the peep-hole, and when he seed oal the people he'd chated, and the evil he had caused, his heart sank into his shoes. 'I'll live in a dark corner, anywhere, if you'll only let me in. My poor mother is waiting for me. She was called Jane, an' was pious—now do 'ee lev me in, there's a dear man,' ses he, the great tears rolling down his chacks. 'Your mother is here weth the shining ones,' says Peter, 'but you caan't come in because of she, no, f'y, you caan't, for up here every fish do hang by his own gills. And you will hang too—on the outside.'"

The county is honeycombed with dissent, and the fat of the land is labelled "Wesleyan." The beneficed clergy are beautifully housed, with gardens and stables, and all the appointments of gentlemen; but the "livings" are not fat. Some country clergy take "paying guests," and some let their houses in the summer. The orthodox Wesleyan ministers are fairly well off, and live rent free; and the others live as best they can, and get commissions on the sale of books and periodicals. One of the brethren left a record of thirty thousand teeth drawn during his professional career. As a rule, they "draw" well, and will draw coin from the most unlikely places. A child having swallowed a piece of silver, the doctor, in despair, sent for the minister, saying the case was hopeless if he failed to get it. The coin was recovered.[D]

There is a good deal of "religion" to be met with, and not so much need for Salvation Army music as in some places. There are certain times when people want to feel good, but they don't all feel the same way at the same time, which saves monotony. They say that at St. Agnes the people start being good when the cold weather sets in, and the feeling lasts until potato-planting time, and then, somehow, the good feeling sloughs off. I don't know what becomes of it, only it is put on one side for the next season, just like a boy puts on one side his bag of marbles and brings out tops. It's the same boy, but a new game. In the summer it's a struggle to be good anywhere, there's so many fairs and feasts and frolics, and the young men and maidens are so fond of courting on the cliffs and downs. It's the custom of the country and suits well enough, so strangers may turn their heads on one side—it's none of their business. In the autumn the good feeling comes again and extends along the coast, especially when the fishing is "slight." The young men get tired of the maidens about this time, and want to be good for evermore, and the want grows with the badness of the season. One sign of goodness in the country is thrift. The man who neither chews, nor smokes, nor drinks beer, and who never spends a copper without looking on both sides of it, is sure to be good.

You always know when the good season is coming on by the people singing. They are pretty good, in spots, at singing, but the "gift," as they call it, is not universal. A gift is supposed to run in families, and a man with the voice of a crow will insist on singing because his great-grandfather once played the double bass in a church choir. There is a musical zone in the West, and the young women who work in the open air have very sweet voices. These are the "bal" maidens, and work on the dressing-floors of the mines. When the time comes round for them to feel good they "tuney up" a bit, and take the young men who work underground along with them to the love-feasts and prayer-meetings in the little Bethels scattered all about the moors.

They call themselves "Weslums" when they are not something ending in "ists" or "ite," and are bursting with goodness every Whit-Monday, just as sure as the day comes round. Why Whit-Monday more than any other day in the year would puzzle any one who did not know that on a certain day the cuckoo must sing. It's a sort of something which makes the bird sing, and it's a sort of something which makes the "Weslums" feel good on Whit-Monday, and draws them with invisible bands towards Gwennap Pit. Whit-Monday is the anniversary of an occasion when John Wesley, the John Wesley, our John Wesley preached in the pit—- not the pit as it is, but the pit as it was.

John Wesley wouldn't know the pit, or the people who flock there now on Whit-Mondays. The old pit was an abandoned mine of no particular shape, but inclined to be round, like a bowl warped in the firing. Then the miners came with pickaxe and shovel, and cut terraces against the land, and made the ring quite round, with its terraces rising one above another, until it became a sort of county monument to which the "Weslums" are drawn in their tens of thousands as to a shrine. John Wesley is a "Saint" in Cornwall, and all those who went before him have to take back seats; and Whit-Monday, at the Pit, is now a sort of religious carnival, with picnic combined, at which Saint John would have shied when in the flesh, like good St. Anthony at a Pleasant Sunday Afternoon, with fiddles and a ballet. When Wesley first came among the people they had an unpleasant trick of throwing stones and turves at him, and hustling him out of one parish into another, and then out upon the downs, where he might live upon frosty turnips when there were no blackberries. "Starring" in the country was not pleasant at times; and cold, wet, and starving, the little-great man often had the appearance of a scarecrow riding upon a tough little nag as starved as himself. But he caught on, and emptied the cock-pit and wrestling ring, and provided entertainments wherein were mighty wrestlings with the invisible for immortal stakes. So he reached the natural cravings of a dramatic people for excitement and scenic change, and made them actors, with the blue heavens above, the earth trembling, and the hill-sides lined with living faces, wet and radiant. Greater than he have tramped the county since, but conditions have altered, and only one Wesley is possible. And that is why people are drawn as to a shrine to Gwennap Pit, and the feeling comes upon them every Whit-Monday that they must go there, for there is a troubling of the waters then, and they may be healed. The old spirit of votive offerings survives in the land of saints and holy wells.

The Cornish must have been a very well-meaning folk at one time, estimated by the number of churches which they built. They built little else, perhaps, but they did build good and substantial churches, mostly with square towers and four pinnacles, to be seen of men far and near. In the parish of Paul, near Penzance, the towers of fifteen parish churches may be counted from one spot, and, though not so thick everywhere, the minds of the people centred around the churches for more reasons than one. In the old days, when roads were few and detestably bad, people reckoned church towers as guides, and calculated distances from church tower to church tower. Every man who ventured far from home knew the church towers by sight and the bells by sound; they were marks at sea as well, and mariners knew them and their bells as well as now they know bell-buoys and lighthouses upon the charts. A hamlet with a church became a "town," so a man says he's going to Church-town, and still measures the distance between places by saying it is so far from one church tower to the other.

Then came the little chapel, four-square and whitewashed, with plain glass windows, winking and blinking in the daytime, but a place of joy. Some people measure distances as from Bethel to Zion, and then no other question is needed on the point of worship. It's all there, when the chapel comes before the church. The day of bitterness is passing, but the preference comes out accidentally.

Now there is a third building seen from far and seen everywhere, and that is the school which has been raised by the people with more hardship and self-denial than in the rest of the kingdom, because of the smallness of means, which often makes the dividing line with downright poverty very fine indeed. Only the thrift of the people would have enabled them to uprear schools finer in every respect than chapels, and first and foremost amongst the buildings of the county. The schools rank next the churches, and are usually built where they may be seen.

The parsons had to fight tooth and nail for their tithes of cows and calves and pigs and other things, and had to look sharp that butter and cheese were not palmed off on them as of like value. The Vicar of Zennor made a note in the parish register that three of his tithe-paying parishioners had planted butter and cheese in the chancel of the church, where he let it stay until it became too ripe for endurance, and then he ordered the churchwardens to remove it, which they did; and the three smart farmers lost their produce, and the vicar got his tithe of living animals, after all. A vicar wanted knowledge not included in university curricula to make the two ends meet in a Cornish parish in the good old times. They have to struggle now to hold their own and make a bit, which some say they are doing, and some shake their heads, so one may think what he likes.