is called in other parts of England a pleasure fair; that is to say,
although some business might be done, yet it was only a secondary
object to amusement.

The main village of Drumston was about a mile from the church which I
have before noticed, and consisted of a narrow street of cob-houses,
whitewashed and thatched, crossing at right angles, by a little stone
bridge, over a pretty, clear trout-stream. All around the village,
immediately behind the backs of the houses, rose the abrupt red hills,
divided into fields by broad oak hedges, thickly set with elms. The
water of the stream, intercepted at some point higher up, was carried
round the crown of the hills for the purposes of irrigation, which,
even at this dead season, showed its advantages by the brilliant
emerald green of the tender young grass on the hill-sides. Drumston, in
short, was an excellent specimen of a close, dull, dirty, and, I fear,
not very healthy Devonshire village in the red country.

On this day the main street, usually in a state of ancle-deep mud six
months in the year, was churned and pounded into an almost knee-deep
state, by four or five hundred hobnail shoes in search of amusement.
The amusements were various. Drinking (very popular), swearing
(ditto), quarrelling, eating pastry ginger-bread and nuts (female
pastime), and looking at a filthy Italian, leading a still more filthy
monkey, who rode on a dog (the only honest one of the three). This all
day, till night dropped down on a scene of drunkenness and vice, which
we had better not seek to look at further. Surely, if ever man was
right, old Joey Bender, the methodist shoemaker, was right, when he
preached against the revels for four Sundays running, and said
roundly that he would sooner see all his congregation leave him and go
up to the steeplehouse (church) in a body, than that they should