where art and books are valued,
and where other things are talked of than the sordid scandals of the
valley and of the police-courts. The difference that the want of this
help may make was brought forcibly home to me one day. I came upon a
group of village boys at play in the road, just as one of them--a fellow
about thirteen years old--conceived a bright idea for a new game. "Now
I'll be a murderer!" he cried, waving his arms ferociously.

There are other circumstances that tend to keep the standard of
sentiment low. As the boys begin to work for money at so early an age,
the money-value of conduct impresses itself strongly upon them, and they
soon learn to think more of what they can get than of what they can do
or are worth. And while they have lost all the steadying influence that
used to flow from the old peasant crafts, they get none of the
steadiness which would come from continuity of employment. The work they
do as errand-boys calls neither for skill in which they might take pride
nor for constancy to any one master; but it encourages them to be
mannish and "knowing" long before their time. Of course the more
generous sentiments are at a discount under such conditions.

Then, too, there can be little doubt that the "superior" attitude of
the employing classes has its injurious effect upon the village
character. The youth who sees his father and mother and sisters treated
as inferiors, and finds that he is treated so too, is led unconsciously
to take a low view of what is due either to himself or to his friends.
The sort of view he takes may be seen in his behaviour. The gangs of
boys who troop and lounge about the roads on Sundays are generally being
merely silly in the endeavour to be witty. They laugh loudly, yet not
humorously and kindly (one very rarely hears really jolly laughter in
the village), but in derision of one another or of the wayfarers--girls
by preference. So far as one can overhear it, their fun is always of
that contumacious character, and it must be deadly to any sentiment of
modesty, or honour, or reverence.

It requires but little penetration to see how these circumstances react
upon the village girls. The frolicsome and giddy appear to enjoy
themselves much as the boys do, but the position must be cruel to those
of a serious tendency. To be treated with disrespect and be made the
subjects of rough wit as they go about is only the more acute part of
their difficulty. One may suppose that