old stain through the leaves of a book, and the old
Bogie which frightened children in dame schools only disappeared with
the Russian scare which set up the Russian for the Frenchman in Crimean
days.

CHAPTER VII.

DOMESTIC LIFE AND THE TAX-GATHERER--THE DOCTOR AND THE BODY-SNATCHER.

By the fireside, in health and disease, and in the separations and
contingencies of family life, we must look for the drawbacks which our
great-grandfathers had to put up with during that remarkable period
which closed and opened the two centuries, when great changes ever
seemed on the eve of being born, yet ever eluded the grasp of the
reformer. What a sluggish, silent, nerveless world, it must have been
as we now think! On the other side of the cloud, which shut out the
future, were most of the contributories to the noisy current of our
modern life--from express trains and steam hammers to lucifer matches
and tram cars! Steel pens, photographs, postage stamps, and even
envelopes, umbrellas, telegrams, pianofortes, ready-made clothes,
public opinion, gas lamps, vaccination, and a host of other things
which now form a part of our daily life, were all unknown or belonged
to the future. But there were a few other things which found a place
in the home which are not often met with now--the weather-house (man
for foul weather and woman for fine)--bellows, child's pole from
ceiling to floor with swing, candlestick stands, chimney pot-hook,
spinning wheel, bottle of leeches, flint gun, pillow and bobbins for
lace, rush-lights, leather breeches, and a host of other things now
nearly obsolete. In the better class houses there was a grandfather's
clock, and possibly a "windmill" clock, but in many villages if you
could not fix the time by the sun "you might have to run half over the
village to find a clock."

One of the primal fountains of our grandfathers' domestic comforts was
the tinder-box and flint and steel. Without this he could neither have
basked in the warmth of the Yule-log nor satisfied the baby in {74} the
night time. But even this was not sufficient without matches, and, as
Bryant and May had not been heard of, this article was made on the
spot. In Royston, as in other places, matches were made and sold from
door to door by the paupers from the Workhouse, by pedlars driving dog
carts, or by gipsies, and the trade of match-makers obtained the
dignified title of "Carvers and Gilders." At by-ways where a tramp, a
ped