be read in the pages of "Yeast" (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 an interest in them. They don't
either subscribe to the prizes, or go down and enjoy the fun.

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 apeing 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
whatever, which isn't some bona fide 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, and your