That I came from London was against me, It seemed to these village Daniels barely possible that I was honest, and quite certain that I cloaked some base designs under an innocent inquiry for empty cottages.  The little black bag in which I carried my lunch on these excursions was the object of extraordinary hypotheses.  At one time I was believed to be selling tracts, at another time, tea; once I was suspected of being an itinerant anarchist, doing a brisk business in infernal machines.  Landladies, who had lavished smiles upon me when they supposed me an ordinary pedestrian in search of the picturesque, gave me the cold shoulder when I began to explain my genuine intentions.  They sometimes treated me with such a mixture of aversion and alarm that it was plain they doubted not only my sincerity but my sanity.  The travelling artist they knew, the pedlar, the insurance agent, and the cockney beanfeaster; but the stranger who desired permanent neighbourship with them they knew not; him they treated as a lunatic at large.  If the papers had chanced to be full at this time of the doings of some flagrant murderer flying from justice, which fortunately for me they were not, I have little doubt that these amiable villagers would have delivered me up to the police without scruple, and have chuckled over their sagacity.

The thing was amusing enough, and yet it had a certain serious significance.  It was a striking illustration of the way in which the growth of cities had perverted even the rural mind.  I had thoughts of writing an article on The Reluctant Villagers, and a very good article I could have made of it; for I found hardly any one who was a villager by choice.  A village might appear fair as Paradise to the casual eye; but closer inspection always revealed the serpent of discontent among the flowers.  Where every outward object breathed of rest, there was universal restlessness among the people.  The common ambition of all the younger generation was to get to London by almost any means, and in almost any capacity.  There was not a household that had not children or relatives in London.  The young ploughman went to London as a carter or ostler; the milkmaid as a servant.  The village carpenter was invariably a middle-aged or an old man, secretly despised by his apprentice, if he had one, for his contentment with his lot.  One saw very few young people in the village street, except mere children.  The universal complaint was that life was dull.  There were no libraries or reading-rooms; no concerts or entertainments; even the innocuous penny-reading had died out.  Nor were there cricket clubs, or any organised system of sport, except in isolated cases.  Here and there a modern-minded clergyman had recognised the need of recreation in his parishioners, and had done something to provide for it; but he was an exception.  Hence it happened that the public-house was the common centre of the village life:  it was the poor man’s club, and it was used less for purposes of social intercourse than for the discussing of racing odds.