ntil it grew so bad that he was obliged to see a doctor. His
account of the interview went in this way: "'How long since you done
this?' the doctor says. 'A month,' I says. 'Then you must be a damn fool
not to 'ave come to me afore,' the doctor says." The man, indeed, looked
just as likely as not to be laid up for six months, if not permanently
crippled, as a result of his carelessness.

Yet, common as such cases are now, they were commoner when I first knew
the village--when there was no cottage hospital, no proper accommodation
at the workhouse infirmary, no parish nurse, and when the parish
contained few people of means to help those who were in distress. I
remember once looking round in that early period, and noting how there
was hardly a cottage to be seen which had not, to my own knowledge, been
recently visited by trouble of some sort or another. True, the troubles
were not all of them of a kind that could be avoided by any precaution,
for some of them arose from the death of old people. Yet in a little
cottage held on a weekly tenancy death often involves the survivors of
the family in more disturbance, more privation too, than it does
elsewhere. Putting these cases aside, however, I could still see where,
within two hundred yards of me, there had been four other deaths--one
being that of an infant, and one that of a woman in child-birth. In the
other two cases the victims were strong men--one, a railway worker, who
was killed on the line; the other a carter, who died of injuries
received in an accident with his horse. The list of lesser misfortunes
included the illness of a man who broke down while at work, with
haemorrhage of the stomach, and the bad case of a bricklayer's labourer,
who lay for days raving from the effects of a sunstroke. In
pre-Christian times it might have been argued that the gods were
offended with the people, so thickly did disasters fall upon them, but
my neighbours seemed unaware of anything abnormal in the circumstances.
By lifelong experience they had learned to take calamity almost as a
matter of course.

For, as I said, the experience begins early. The children, the young
girls, have their share of it. During those earlier years I am
recalling, a little girl of the village, who was just beginning domestic
service in my household, was, within the space of six months, personally
concerned in two accidents to little children. She came from one of
half-a-dozen families whose cottages,