In view of their unpromising circumstances the people as a rule are surprisingly cheerful. It is true there are never any signs in the valley of that almost festive temper, that glad relish of life, which, if we may believe the poets, used to characterize the English village of old times. Tested by that standard of happiness, it is a low-spirited, mirthless, and all but silent population that we have here now. Of public and exuberant enjoyment there is nothing whatever. And yet, subdued though they may be, the cottagers usually manage to keep in tolerable spirits. A woman made me smile the other day. I had seen her husband a week earlier, and found him rheumatic and despondent; but when I inquired how he did, she conceded, with a laugh: "Yes, he had a bit o' rheumatism, but he's better now. He 'ad the 'ump then, too." I inferred that she regarded his dejection as quite an unnecessary thing; and this certainly is the customary attitude. The people are slow to admit that they are unhappy. At a "Penny Readings" an entertainer caused some displeasure by a quite innocent joke in this connection. Coming through the village, he noticed the sign of one of the public-houses—The Happy Home—and invented a conundrum which he put from the platform: "Why was this a very miserable village?" But the answer, "Because it has only one Happy Home in it," gave considerable offence. For we are not used to these subtleties of language, and the point was missed, a good many folk protesting that we have "a lot o' happy homes" here.

That they should be so touchy about it is perhaps suggestive—pitifully suggestive—of a suspicion in them that their happiness is open to question. None the less, the general impression conveyed by the people's manners is that of a quiet and rather cheery humour, far indeed from gaiety, but farther still from wretchedness. And in matters like this one's senses are not deceived. I know that my neighbours have abundant excuses for being down-hearted; and, as described in an earlier chapter, I sometimes overhear their complainings; but more often than not the evidence of voice-tones and stray words is reassuring rather than dispiriting.

Notice, for instance, the women who have done their shopping in the town early in the morning, and are coming home for a day's work. They are out of breath, and bothered with their armfuls of purchases; but nine times out of ten their faces look hopeful; there is no sound of grievance or of worry in their talk; their smiling "Good-morning" to you proves somehow that it is not a bad morning with them. One day a woman going to the town a little late met another already returning, loaded up with goods. "'Ullo, Mrs. Fry," she laughed, "you be 'bliged to be fust, then?" "Yes; but I en't bought it all, I thought you'd be comm', so I left some for you." "That's right of ye. En't it a nice mornin'?" "Jest what we wants! My old man was up an' in he's garden...." The words grow indistinguishable as you get farther away; you don't hear what the "old man" was doing so early, but the country voices sound for a long time, comfortably tuned to the pleasantness of the day.

This sort of thing is so common that I seldom notice it, unless it is varied in some way that attracts attention. For instance, I could not help listening to a woman who was pushing her baby in a perambulator down the hill. The baby sat facing her, as bland as a little image of Buddha, and as unresponsive, but she was chaffing it. "Well, you be a funny little gal, ben't ye? Why, you be goin' back'ards into the town! Whoever heared tell o' such a thing—goin' to the town back'ards. You be a funny little gal!" To me it was a funny little procession, with a touch of the pathetic hidden away in it somewhere; but it bore convincing witness to happiness in at least one home in our valley.

It is not so easy to discover, or rather to point out, the corresponding evidence in the demeanour of the men, although when one knows them one is aware that their attitude towards life is quite as courageous as the women's, if not quite so playful. I confess that I rarely see them until they have put a day's work behind them; and they may be more lightsome when they start in the morning, at five o'clock or soon after it. Be that as it may, in the evenings I find them taciturn, nonchalant rather than cheerful, not much disposed to be sprightly. Long-striding and ungainly, they walk home; between six o'clock and seven you may be sure of seeing some of them coming up the hill from the town, alone or by twos and threes. They speak but little; they look tired and stern; very often there is nothing but a twinkle in their eyes to prove to you that they are not morose. But in fact they are still taking life seriously; their thoughts, and hopes too, are bent on the further work they mean to do when they shall have had their tea. For the more old-fashioned men allow themselves but little rest, and in many a cottage garden of an evening you may see the father of the family soberly at work, and liking it too. If his wife is able to come and look on and chatter to him, or if he can hear her laughing with a friend in the next garden, so much the better; but he does not stop work. Impelled, as I shall show later, by other reasons besides those of economy, many of the men make prodigiously long days of it, at least during the summer months. I have known them to leave home at five or even four in the morning, walk five or six miles, do a day's work, walk back in the evening so as to reach home at six or seven o'clock, and then, after a meal, go on again in their gardens until eight or nine. They seem to be under some spiritual need to keep going; their conscience enslaves them. So they grow thin and gaunt in body, grave and very quiet in their spirits. But sullen they very rarely are. With rheumatism and "the 'ump" combined a man will sometimes grow exasperated and be heard to speak irritably, but usually it is a very amiable "Good-evening" that greets you from across the hedge where one of these men is silently digging or hoeing.

The nature of their work, shall I say, tends to bring them to quietness of soul? I hesitate to say it, because, though work upon the ground with spade or hoe has such a soothing influence upon the amateur, there is a difference between doing it for pleasure during a spare hour and doing it as a duty after a twelve hours' day, and without any prospect of holiday as long as one lives. Nevertheless it is plain to be seen that, albeit their long days too often reduce them to a state of apathy, these quiet and patient men experience no less often a compensating delight in the friendly feeling of the tool responding to their skill, and in the fine freshness of the soil as they work it, and in the solace, so varied and so unfailingly fresh, of the open air. Thus much at least I have seen in their looks, and have heard in their speech. On a certain June evening when it had set in wet, five large-limbed men, just off their work on the railway, came striding past me up the hill. They had sacks over their shoulders; their clothes and boots, from working in gravel all day, were of the same yellowish-brown colour as the sacks; they were getting decidedly wet; but they looked enviably easy-going and unconcerned. As they went by me one after another, one sleepy-eyed man, comfortably smoking his pipe, vouchsafed no word or glance. But the others, with friendly sidelong glance at me, all spoke; and their placid voices were full of rich contentment. "Good-night"; "Nice rain"; "G'd-evenin'"; and, last of all, "This'll make the young taters grow!" The man who said this looked all alert, as if the blood were dancing in him with enjoyment of the rain; his eyes were beaming with pleasure. So the five passed up the hill homewards, to have some supper, and then, perhaps, watch and listen to the rain on their gardens until it was time to go to bed.

I ought to mention, though I may hardly illustrate, one faculty which is a great support to many of the men—I mean the masculine gift of "humour." Not playful-witted like the women, nor yet apt, like the women, to refresh their spirits in the indulgence of sentiment and emotion, but rather stolid and inclined to dim brooding thought, they are able to see the laughable side of their own misadventures and discomforts; and thanks to this they keep a sense of proportion, as though perceiving that if their labour accomplishes its end, it does not really matter that they get tired, or dirty, or wet through in doing it. This is a social gift, of small avail to the men working alone in their gardens; but it serves them well during the day's work with their mates, or when two or three of them together tackle some job of their own, such as cleaning out a well, or putting up a fowl-house. Then, if somebody gets splashed, or knocks his knuckles, and softly swears, his wrath turns to a grin as the little dry chuckle or the sly remark from the others reminds him that his feelings are understood. It is well worth while to be present at these times. I laugh now to think of some of them that I have enjoyed; but I will not risk almost certain failure in trying to describe them, for their flavour depends on minute details into which I have no space to enter.

But whatever alleviations there may be to their troubles, the people's geniality is still noteworthy. In circumstances that contrast so pitifully with those of the employing classes, it would seem natural if they were full of bitterness and envy; yet that is by no means the case. Being born to poverty and the labouring life, they accept the position as if it were entirely natural. Of course it has its drawbacks; but they suppose that it takes all sorts to make a world, and since they are of the labouring sort they must make the best of it. With this simple philosophy they have contrived hitherto to meet their troubles calmly, not blaming other people for them, unless in individual cases, and hardly dreaming of translating them into social injustice. They have no sense of oppression to poison their lives. The truth which economists begin to recognize, that where there are wealthy and idle classes there must as an inevitable result be classes who are impoverished and overworked, has not found its way into the villager's head.

So, supported by an instinctive fatalism, the people have taken their plight for granted, without harbouring resentment against the more fortunate. It may be added that most of them are convinced believers in those fallacies which cluster around the phrase "making work." It were strange if they were not. The labourer lives by being employed at work; and, knowing his employer personally—this or that farmer or tradesman or villa-resident—he sees the work he lives by actually being "made." Only very rarely does it occur to him that when he goes to the shop he, too, makes work. In bad times, perhaps, he gets an inkling of it; and then, when wages are scarce, and the public-house landlord grumbles, old-fashioned villagers will say, "Ah, they misses the poor man, ye see!" But the idea is too abstract to be followed to its logical conclusion. The people do not see the multitudes at work for them in other counties, making their boots and ready-made clothes, getting their coal, importing their cheap provisions; but they do see, and know by name, the well-to-do of the neighbourhood, who have new houses built and new gardens laid out; and they naturally enough infer that labour would perish if there were no well-to-do people to be supplied.

Against the rich man, therefore, the labourers have no sort of animosity. If he will spend money freely, the richer he is the better. Throughout the south of England this is the common attitude. I remember, not long ago, on a holiday, coming to a village which looked rarely prosperous for its county, owing, I was told, to the fact that the county lunatic asylum near by caused money to be spent there. In the next village, which was in a deplorable state, and had no asylum, the people were looking enviously towards this one, and wishing that at least their absentee landlords would come and hunt the neighbourhood, though it appeared that one of these gentlemen was a Bishop. But the labouring folk were not exacting as to the sort of person—lunatics, fox-hunters, Bishops—anybody would be welcome who would spend riches in a way to "make work." And so here. This village looks up to those who control wealth as if they were the sources of it; and if there is a little dislike of some of them personally, there has so far appeared but little bitterness of feeling against them as a class.

I do not say that there has never been any grumbling. One day, years ago, an old friend of mine broke out, in his most contemptuous manner, "What d'ye think Master Dash Blank bin up to now?" He named the owner of a large estate near the town. "Bin an' promised all his men a blanket an' a quarter of a ton o' coal at Christmas. A blanket, and a quarter of a ton o' coal! Pity as somebody hadn't shoved a brick down his throat, when he had got 'n open, so's to keep 'n open!" The sentiment sounds envious, but in fact it was scornful. It was directed, not against the great man's riches, but against the well-known meanness he displayed anew in his contemptible gifts.

A faint trace of traditional class animosity sounds in one or two customary phrases of the village, for instance in the saying that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. Yet this has become such a by-word as to be usually stated with a smile; for is it not an old acquaintance amongst opinions? The older people even have a humorous development of it. According to their improved version, there are not two only, but three kinds of law: one kind for the rich, one for the poor, and one "the law that nobody can't make." What is this last? Why, the law "to make a feller pay what en't got nothink." By such witticisms the edge of bitterness is turned; the sting is taken out of that sense of inequality which, as the labourer probably knows, would poison his present comfort and lead him into dangerous courses if he let it rankle. With one exception, the angriest recognition of class differences which I have come across amongst the villagers was when I passed two women on their way home from the town, where, I surmised, they, or some friend of theirs, had just been fined at the County Court or the Petty Sessions. "Ah!" one was saying, with spiteful emphasis, "there'll come a great day for they to have their Judge, same as we poor people." Yet even there, if the emotion was newly-kindled, the sentiment was too antiquated to mean much. For it is a very ancient idea—that of getting even with one's enemies in the next world instead of in this. So long as the poor can console themselves by leaving it to Providence to avenge them at the Day of Judgment, it cannot be said that there is any virulent class-feeling amongst them. The most that you can make of it is that they occasionally feel spiteful. It happened, in this case, to be against rich people that those two women felt their momentary grudge; but it was hardly felt against the rich as a class; and if the same kind of offence had come from some neighbour, they would have said much the same kind of thing. In the family disputes which occur now and then over the inheritance of a few pounds' worth of property, the losers put on a very disinterested and superior look, and say piously of the gainers: "Ah, they'll never prosper! They can't prosper!"

The exceptional case alluded to above was certainly startling. I was talking to an old man whom I had long known: a little wrinkled old man, deservedly esteemed for his integrity and industry, full of experience as well as of old-world notions sometimes a little "grumpy," a little caustic in his manner of talking, but on the whole quite kindly and tolerant in his disposition. You could often watch in his face the habitual practice of patience, as, with a wry smile and a contemptuous remark, he dismissed some disagreeable topic or other from his thoughts. He had come down in the world. His father's cottage, already mortgaged when he inherited it, had been sold over his head after the death of the mortgagee, so that thenceforth he was on no better footing than any other of the labourers. Gradually, as the demand failed for his old-fashioned forms of skill—thatching, mowing, and so on—his position became more and more precarious; yet he remained good-tempered, in his queer acid way, until he was past seventy years old. That evening, when he startled me, he had been telling of his day's work as a road-mender, and he was mightily philosophical over the prospect of having to give up even that last form of regular employment, because of the exposure and the miles of walking which it entailed. Nobody could have thought him a vindictive or even a discontented man so far. By chance, however, something was said about the uncultivated land in the neighbourhood, covered as it is with fir-woods now; and at that he suddenly fired up. Pointing to the woods, which could be seen beyond the valley, he said spitefully, while his eyes blazed: "I can remember when all that was open common, and you could go where you mind to. Now 'tis all fenced in, and if you looks over the fence they'll lock ye up. And they en't got no more right to it, Mr. Bourne, than you and me have! I should like to see they woods all go up in flames!"

That was years ago. The woods are flourishing; the old man is past doing any mischief; but I remember his indignation. And it was the sole case I have met with in the parish, of animosity harboured not so much against persons as against the existing position of things. This one man was alive to the injustice of a social arrangement; and in that respect he differed from the rest of my neighbours, unless I am much deceived in them. Of course there may be more of envious feeling abroad in the village than I know about. It is the sort of thing that would keep itself secret; and perhaps this old man's contemporaries, who shared his recollections, silently shared his bitterness too. But if so, I do not believe that they have passed the feeling on to their children. The impression is strong in me that the people have never learnt to look upon the distribution of property, which has left them so impoverished, as anything other than an inevitable dispensation of Providence. If they thought otherwise, at any rate if the contrary view were at all prevalent amongst them, they must be most gifted hypocrites, to go about with the good temper in their eyes and the cheerfulness in their voices that I have been describing.

To what should it be attributed—this power of facing poverty with contentment? To some extent doubtless it rests on Christian teaching, although perhaps not much on the Christian teaching of the present day. Present-day religion, indeed, must often seem to the cottagers a tiresome hobby reserved to the well-to-do; but from distant generations there seems to have come down, in many a cottage family, a rather lofty religious sentiment which fosters honesty, patience, resignation, courage. Much of the gravity, much of the tranquillity of soul of the more sedate villagers must be ascribed to this traditional influence, whose effects are attractive enough, in the character and outlook of many an old cottage man and woman.

Yet there is much more in the village temper than can be accounted for by this cause alone. In most of the people the cheerfulness does not suggest pious resignation, in the hope of the next world; it looks like a grim and lusty determination to make the best of this world. It is contemptuous, or laughing. As I have shown, it has a tendency to be beery. It occasionally breaks out into disorder. In fact, if the folk were not habitually overworked they would be boisterous, jolly. Of course it may all proceed from the strong English nature in them; and in that case we need seek no other explanation of it. Yet if one influence, namely, a traditional Christianity, is to be credited—as it certainly should be—with an effect upon the village character in one direction, then probably, behind this other effect in another direction, some other influence is at work. And for my part I make no doubt of it. The cheerfulness of the cottagers rests largely upon a survival of the outlook and habits of the peasant days before the common was enclosed. It is not a negative quality. My neighbours are not merely patient and loftily resigned to distress; they are still groping, dimly, for an enjoyment of life which they have not yet realized to be unattainable. They maintain the peasant spirits. Observe, I do not suggest that they are intentionally old-fashioned. I do not believe them to be sympathetic at all to those self-conscious revivals of peasant arts which are now being recommended to the poor by a certain type of philanthropists. They make no Æsthetic choice. They do not deliberate which of the ancestral customs it would be "nice" for them to follow; but, other things being equal, they incline to go on in the way that has been usual in their families. It is a tendency that sways them, not a thought-out scheme of the way to live. Now and again, perhaps, some memory may strengthen the tendency, as they are reminded of this or that fine old personality worthy of imitation, or as some circumstance of childhood is recalled, which it would be pleasant to restore; but in the main the force which bears them on is a traditional outlook, fifty times more potent than definite but transient memories. This it is that has to be recognized in my neighbours. Down in their valley, until the "residents" began to flock in, the old style of thinking lingered on; in the little cottages the people, from earliest infancy, were accustomed to hear all things—persons and manners, houses and gardens, and the day's work—appraised by an ancient standard of the countryside; and consequently it happens that this evening while I am writing, out there on the slopes of the valley the men and women, and the very children whose voices I can just hear, are living by an outlook in which the values are different from those of easy-going people, and in which, especially, hardships have never been met by peevishness, but have been beaten by good-humour.