do,
and so to bed.

THE OLD BOY MORALIZETH ON VEASTS.

That's a fair, true sketch, as far as it goes, of one of the larger
village feasts in the Vale of Berks, when I was a little boy. They
are much altered for the worse, I am told. I haven't been at one
these twenty years, but I have been at the statute fairs in some
west-country towns, where servants are hired, and greater abominations
cannot be found. What village feasts have come to, I fear, in many
cases, may be read in the pages of "Yeast,[77]" though I never saw one
so bad--thank God!

Do you want to know why? It is because, as I said before, gentlefolk
and farmers have left off joining or taking any interest in them. They
don't either subscribe to the prizes, or go down and enjoy the fun.

[77] #Yeast#: a novel by Charles Kingsley.

Is this a good or a bad sign? I hardly know. Bad, sure enough, if it
only arises from the further separation of classes consequent on
twenty years of buying cheap and selling dear, and its accompanying
overwork; or because our sons and daughters have their hearts in
London club-life, or so-called society, instead of in the old English
home duties; because farmers' sons are aping fine gentlemen, and
farmers' daughters caring more to make bad foreign music than good
English cheeses. Good, perhaps, if it be that the time for the old
"veast" has gone by, that it is no longer the healthy, sound
expression of English country holiday-making; that, in fact, we as a
nation have got beyond it, and are in a transition state, feeling for
and soon likely to find some better substitute.

Only I have just got this to say before I quit the text. Don't let
reformers of any sort think that they are going really to lay hold
of the working boys and young men of England by any educational
grapnel[78] whatever, which hasn't some _bona fide_[79] equivalent for
the games of the old country "veast" in it; something to put in the
place of the back-swording and wrestling and racing; something to
try the muscles of men's bodies, and the endurance of their hearts,
and to make them rejoice in their strength. In all the new-fangled
comprehensive plans which I see, this is all left out; and the
consequence is that your great Mechanics' Institutes end in
intellectual priggism;[80] and your Christian Young Men Societies
in religious Pharisaism.

[78] #Grapnel#: a grappling hook.

[79] #Bona fide#: real.

[80] #Priggism#: affectation, co