aid to defy. The disorder of the village lads
was noticeable long ago at the night-school; for example, on an evening
shortly after the "Khaki" election, when Mr. Brodrick (now Lord
Midleton) had been re-elected for this division. On that evening a
lecture on Norway, illustrated by lantern slides, could hardly be got
through owing to the liveliness of a few lads, who amused all their
comrades by letting off volleys of electioneering cries. I have
forgotten who the lecturer was, but I remember well how the shouts of
"Good old Brodrick!" often prevailed, so that one could not hear the
man's voice. Since then there have been more striking examples of the
same sort of vivacity. Not two winters ago the weekly meetings of a
"boys' club," which aimed only to help the village lads pass an evening
sensibly, had to be abandoned, owing to the impossible behaviour of the
members. One week I heard that they had run amok amongst the furniture
of the schoolroom where the meetings were held; on the next, they blew
out the lamps, and locked one of the organizers into the room for an
hour; and a week or two afterwards they piled window-curtains and
door-mats on to the fire, and nearly got the building ablaze. In short,
to judge from what was told me, there seems to have been little to
distinguish them from frolicsome undergraduates, save their
poverty-stricken clothes and their unaspirated speech. It is true they
kept their excesses within doors, but then, they had no influential
relatives to take their part against an interfering police force; and
moreover, most of them came to the meetings a little subdued by ten
hours or so of work at wage-earning. Still, their "high spirits" were in
evidence, uncontrolled--just as elsewhere--by any high sentiment. The
sense of personal responsibility for their actions, the power to
understand that there is such a thing as "playing the game" even towards
people in authority or towards the general public, seemed to be as
foreign to them as if they had never had to soil their hands with hard
work.

Whatever may be the case with others, in the village lads a merely
intellectual unpreparedness is doubtless partly accountable for this
behaviour. The villagers having had no previous experience of action in
groups, unless under compulsion like that of the railway-ganger or of
the schoolmaster with his cane, it is strange now to the boys to find
themselves at a school where there is no compulsion, but all is