rood-loft at the church there. The boys and girls play in the ditches
till they go to school, and they play in the hedges and ditches every
hour they can get out of school, and the moment their time is up they go
to work among the hedges and ditches, and though they may have had to
read standard authors at school, no sooner do they get among the furrows
than they talk hedge and ditch language. They do not talk Pope, or
Milton, or Addison; they 'knaaws,' 'they be a-gwoin thur,' it's a 'geat,'
and a 'vield,' and a 'vurrow.' These are the old faces you see, the same
old powers are at work to fashion them. Heavy, blind blows of the Wind,
the Rain, Frost, and Heat, have beaten up their faces in rude _repousse_
work. They have nails in their boots, but new hats on their heads; he who
paints them aright should paint the old nailed boots, but also the new
hats and the Waltham watches. Why do they not read? All have been taught,
and curious as the inconsistency may seem, they all value the privilege
of being _able_ to read and write, and yet they do not exercise it,
except in a casual, random way. I for one, when the public schools began
all through the rural districts, thought that at last the printing-press
was going to reach the country people. In a measure it has done so, but
in a flickering, uncertain manner; they read odd bits which come drifting
to their homes in irregular ways, just as people on the coast light their
fires with fragments of wreck, chance-thrown by the stormy spring-tides
on the beach. So the fire of the mind in country places is fed with chips
and splinters, and shapeless pieces that do not fit together, and no one
sits down to read. I think I see two reasons why country people do not
read, the first of which, thanks be to Allah, will endure for ever; the
second may perhaps disappear in time, when those who make books come to
see what is wanted.

First, nature has given them so much to read out of doors, such a vast
and ever-changing picture-book, that white paper stained with black type