ths of an evening,
it was pretty well confined to those who would have been doing the like,
"veast or no veast;" and on the whole, the effect was humanising and
Christian. In fact, the only reason why this is not the case still is
that gentlefolk and farmers have taken to other amusements, and have, as
usual, forgotten the poor. They don't attend the feasts themselves, and
call them disreputable; whereupon the steadiest of the poor leave them
also, and they become what they are called. Class amusements, be
they for dukes or ploughboys, always become nuisances and curses to a
country. The true charm of cricket and hunting is that they are still
more or less sociable and universal; there's a place for every man who
will come and take his part.

No one in the village enjoyed the approach of "veast day" more than Tom,
in the year in which he was taken under old Benjy's tutelage. The feast
was held in a large green field at the lower end of the village. The
road to Farringdon ran along one side of it, and the brook by the side
of the road; and above the brook was another large, gentle, sloping
pasture-land, with a footpath running down it from the churchyard; and
the old church, the originator of all the mirth, towered up with its
gray walls and lancet windows, overlooking and sanctioning the whole,
though its own share therein had been forgotten. At the point where the
footpath crossed the brook and road, and entered on the field where the
feast was held, was a long, low roadside inn; and on the opposite side
of the field was a large white thatched farmhouse, where dwelt an old
sporting farmer, a great promoter of the revels.

Past the old church, and down the footpath, pottered the old man and the
child hand-in-hand early on the afternoon of the day before the feast,
and wandered all round the ground, which was already being occupied
by the "cheap Jacks," with their green-covered carts and marvellous
assortment of wares; and the booths of more legitimate small traders,
with their tempting arrays of fairings and eatables; and penny
peep-shows and other shows, containing pink-eyed ladies, and dwarfs, and
boa-constrictors, and wild Indians. But the object of most interest to
Benjy, and of course to his pupil also, was the stage of rough planks
some four feet high, which was being put up by the village carpenter for
the back-swording and wrestling. And after surveying the whole tenderly,
old Benjy led his charge away to the r