on? When the Silly Season is at its
very bathos; when the monster gooseberries have gone to seed and the
showers of frogs ceased to fall; after the matrimonial efforts of
Margate or Scarborough, and before the more decided business of the
Christmas Decorations, then there is deep mystery in the penetralia of
every parish. The great scheme of Penny Readings is being concocted, and
all the available talent of the district--all such as is "orthodox" and
"correct"--is laid under contribution.

It is true to a proverb that we English people have a knack of doing the
best possible things in the worst possible way; and that not
unfrequently when we do once begin doing them we do them to death. It
takes some time to convince us that the particular thing is worth doing
at all; but, once persuaded, we go in for it with all our British might
and main. The beard-and-moustache movement was a case in point. Some
years ago a moustache was looked upon by serious English people as
decidedly reckless and dissipated. A beard was fit only for a bandit.
Nowadays, the mildest youth in the Young Men's Christian Association may
wear a moustache without being denounced as "carnal," and paterfamilias
revels in the beard of a sapeur, no misopogon daring to say him nay. To
no "movement," however, does the adage "Vires acquirit eundo" apply more
thoroughly than to that connected with "Penny Readings." Originally
cropping up timidly in rustic and suburban parishes, it has of late
taken gigantic strides, and made every parish where it does _not_ exist,
rural or metropolitan, very exceptional indeed. There was a sound
principle lying at the bottom of the movement, in so far as it was
designed to bring about a fusion of classes; though, perhaps, it
involved too much of an assumption that the "working man" had to be
lectured to, or read to, by his brother in purple and fine linen. Still
the theory was so far sound. Broad cloth was to impart to fustian the
advantages it possessed in the way of reading, singing, fiddling, or
what not; and that not gratuitously, which would have offended the
working man's dignity, but for the modest sum of one penny, which,
whilst Lazarus was not too poor to afford, Dives condescended to accept,
and apply to charitable purposes.

Such being, in brief, the theory of the Penny Reading movement, it may
be interesting to see how it is carried out in practice. Now, in order
to ascertain this, I availed myself of several opport