Under Town lives; the discovery of so much beauty hitherto unsuspected and, indeed, not to be caught sight of without exceptional opportunity, sets one watching and waiting in order to find out the real difference of their minds from the minds of us who have been through the educational mill; also to find out where and how they have the advantage of us. For I can feel rather than see, here, the presence of a wisdom that I know nothing about, not even by hearsay, and that I suspect to be largely the traditional wisdom of the folk, gained from contact with hard fact, slowly accumulated and handed on through centuries-the wisdom from which education cuts us off, which education teaches us to poohpooh.

Such wisdom is difficult to grasp; very shy. My chance of observing it lies precisely in this: that I am neither a sky-pilot, nor a district visitor, nor a reformer, nor a philanthropist, nor any sort of "worker," useful or impertinent; but simply a sponge to absorb and, so far as can be, an understander to sympathize. But it is hard entirely to share another people's life, to give oneself up to it, to be received into it. They know intuitively (their intuitions are extraordinarily acute) that one is thinking more than one gives voice to; putting two and two together; which keeps alive a lingering involuntary distrust and a certain amount, however little, of ill-grounded respectfulness. (Respectfulness is less a tribute to real or fancied superiority, than an armor to defend the "poor man's" private life.) Besides which, these people are necessary to, or at least their intimacy is greatly desired by, myself, whereas their own life is complete and rounded without me. I am tangential merely. They owe me nothing: I owe them much, and if I gain my object, shall owe more. It is I who am the client, they the patrons.

We are told often enough now-a-days that capital fattens on labor, naturally, instinctively, without much sense of wrong-doing, and has so fattened since the days when Laban tried to overreach Jacob. What we are not so often told is that the poor man no less instinctively looks upon the gen'leman as legitimate sport. "An 'orrible lie" between two poor people is fair play from a poor man to a wealthier, just as, for instance, the wealthy man considers himself at liberty to make speeches full of hypocritical untruth when he is seeking the suffrage of the free and independent electors, or is trying to teach the poor man how to make himself more profitable to his employer. It is stupid, at present, to burke class distinctions. Though they do not, perhaps, operate over so large a segment of life as formerly, they still exist in ancient strength, notwithstanding the fashionable cant-lip-service only to democratic ideals-about the whole world kin. There is not one high wall, but two high walls between the classes and the masses so-called; and that erected in self-defence by the exploited is the higher and more difficult to climb. On the one side is a disciplined, fortified Gibraltar, held by the gentry; then comes a singularly barren and unstable neutral zone; and on the other side is the vast chaotic mass. Under Town, I notice, a gentleman is always gen'leman, a workman or tramp is man, but the fringers, the inhabitants of the neutral zone, are called persons. For example: "That man what used to work for the council is driving about the gen'leman as stays with Mrs. Smith -the person what used to keep the greengrocery shop to the top of High Street afore her took the lodging-house on East Cliff." It is, in fact, strange how undemocratic the poor man is. (Not so strange when one realizes that far from having everything to gain and nothing to lose by a levelling process,

In

he has a deal to lose and his gains are problematical.) I am not sure that he doesn't prefer to regard the gen'leman as another species of animal. Jimmy and Tommy have a name of their own for the little rock-cakes their mother cooks. They call them gentry-cakes because such morsels are fitter for the -as Jimmy and Tommy imaginesmaller mouths of ladies and gentlemen. The other afternoon Mabel told me that a boat she had found belonged not to a boy but to a gentry-boy. Some time ago I begged Tony not to sir me; threatened to punch his head if he did. It discomforted me to be belabored with a title of respect which I could not reasonably claim from him. Rather I should sir him, for he is older, and at least my equal in character; he has begotten healthy children for his country and he works hard "to raise 'em fitty." Against my bookknowledge he can set a whole stock of information and experience more directly derived from, and bearing upon, life. I don't consider myself unfit to survive, but he is fitter, and up to the present has done more to justify his survival-which after all is the ultimate test of a man's position in the race. At all events he did cease sirring me. Except on ceremonial occasions. At ordinary times the detested word is unheard, but it is still: "Gudemorning, sir!" "Gude-night, sir!" sometimes: "Your health, sir!" At that the matter must rest, I suppose, though the sir is a symbol of class difference, and to do away with the symbol is to weaken the difference.

And

But at the same time, I am lucky enough to possess certain advantages. A militant Westcountry man, at home in no other part of England, prouder of being a Westcountryman than of being an Englishman, receives more confidence hereabout than an up-country man would. Again, I have managed to preserve the ability to speak dialect in

spite of all the efforts of my pastors and masters to make me talk the stereotyped, comparatively inexpressive compromise which goes by the name of King's English. Tony is hard of hearing; catches the meaning of dialect far quicker than that of standard English, and I notice that the damn'd spot sir seldom blots our conversation when we talk in dialect. Finally there is the great problem of self-expression. There, at any rate, I am well to windward.

The cause of the uneducated man's use of the word like is interesting. He makes a statement, uses an adjective, and especially if the statement relates to his own feelings or to something unfamiliar-he tacks on the word like, spoken in a peculiarly explanatory tone of voice. What does the word mean there? Is it merely a habit, a "gyte," as Tony would say? And why the word like?

When a poet wishes to utter thoughts that are too unformulated, that lie too deep, for words

Break, break, break

On thy cold gray stones, O sea! And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me

he has recourse to simile and metaphor. Take, for example, the transience of human life, a subject on which at times we most of us have keen, vague thoughts that, we imagine, would be so profound could our tongues but utter them.

Blake's Thel is a symbol of the transience of life.

O life of this our Spring! why fades the lotus of the water? Why fade these children of the Spring, born but to smile and fall?

"Thel, the transient maiden, is. . . . What is Thel?" says Blake, in effect. The cannot be described straightforwardly. "What then is Thel like?"

Ah! Thel is like a watery bow, and like a parting cloud,

Like a reflection in a glass, like shadows on the water,

Like dreams of infants, like a smile upon an infant's face,

Like the dove's voice, like transient day, like music in the air.

Shakespeare, in a like difficulty, uses one convincing simile:

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore

So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing place with that which goes before,

In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Drummond of Hawthornden exclaims: This life, which seems so fair,

Is like a bubble blown up in the air By sporting children's breath. . .

Lord Bacon speaks more boldly and concisely. He forsakes simile for metaphor, leaving the word like to be understood.

The World's a bubble, and the Life of Man

Less than a span. . . .

Were Tony to try and express himself by the same means, he would say: "The world's a bubble, like, and the life of a man less than a span, like."

Like, in fact, with the poor man as with the poet, connotes simile and metaphor. The poor man's vocabulary, like the poet's, is quite inadequate to express his thoughts. Both, in their several ways, are driven to the use of unhackneyed words and simile and metaphor; both use a language of great flexibility; for which reason we find that after the poet himself, the poor man speaks most poetically. Witness

1

The flexibility and expressiveness of dialect lies largely in its ability to change its verbal form and pronunciation from a speech very broad indeed to something approaching standard English. For example, "Yom'm a fool," is playful; "You'm a fule," less so. "You're a fool," asserts the fact without blame; while "Thee a't a fule!" would be spoken in temper, and the second is the more emphatic. The real difference between "I

the beautiful description: “All to once the nor'easter springed out from land, an' afore us could downhaul the mainsail, the sea were feather-white, an' skatting in over the bows." New words are eagerly seized; hence the malapropisms and solecisms so frequently made fun of, without appreciation of their cause. Obsolete has come hereto from the navy, through sons who are bluejackets. Now, when Tony wishes to sum up in one word the two facts that he is older and also less vigorous than formerly, he says, "Tony's getting obsolete like." A soulless word, borrowed from official papers, has acquired for us a poetic wealth of meaning in which the pathos of the old ship, of declining years, and of Tony's own aging, are all present with one knows not what other suggestions besides, And when obsolete is fully domesticated here, the like will be struck off.

In short, every time Tony uses like, he is admitting, and explaining, that he has expressed himself as best he could, but inadequately notwithstanding. He has felt something more delicately, thought upon something more accurately, than he can possibly say. He is always pathetically eager to make himself plain, to be understood. One knows well that touching look in the eyes of a dog, when, as we say, it all but speaks. Often have I seen that same look, still more intense, in Tony's eyes, when he has become mazed with efforts to express himself, and I have wished that as with the dog, a pat, a small caress, could change the look into joyfulness. But it is just because I am fond of him that I am able to feel with him and to a certain extent to di

an't got nothing," "I an't got ort," and I an't got nort"-"Oo't?" "Casn'?" "Will 'ee?" and "Will you?"-"You'm not," "You ain't," and "You hain't" are hardly to be appreciated by those who speak only standard English. In parts of Devon, again, thee and thou are used between intimates, as in French. Thee is usual from a mother to her children, but is disrespectful from children to their mother.

vine his half-uttered thoughts; to take them up and return them to him clothed in more or less current English which, he knows, would convey them to anybody, and which shows him more clearly than before what he really was thinking. That seems to be one of my chief functions here-thought-publisher. Obviously grateful, he talks and talks, usually while the remains of a meal lie scattered on the table. "Ay!" he says, at the end of a debauch of likes. "I don' know what I du know. Tony's a silly ol' fule!"

He does not believe it; nor do I; for I am often struck with wonder at the thoughts and mind-pictures which we so curiously arrive at together.

II.

The old feudal class-distinctions are fast breaking down. But are we arriving any nearer the democratic ideal of liberté, égalité, fraternité? In place of the old distinctions, are we not setting up new distinctions, more powerful to divide because less superficial? There is to-day a greater social gulf fixed between the man who takes his morning tub and him who does not, than between the man of wealth or family and him who has neither. New-made and pink, the "gentleman" arises daily from his circle of splashes, a masculine Venus from a foam of soap-suds. (About womenfolk we are neither so inquiring nor so particular.) For the cults of religion and pedigree we have substituted the cult of soap and water, and "the prominent physician of Harley Street" is its high-priest. Are you a reputed atheist? Poor man! doubtless God will enlighten you in His good time. Are you wicked? Well, well. ... Have you made a fortune by forsaking the official Christian morality in favor of the commercial code? You can redeem all by endowing a hospital or university. But can they say of you that somehow or other you don't

look quite clean? Then you are damn'd!

The cottage where the heroine of the "nice" book lives, is always spotlessly clean. A foreigner who adopts the bath habit, is said to be just like an Englishman. It is the highest praise he can earn, and will go further in English society than the best introductions.

Cleanliness is our greatest class-symbol. In living with people who have been brought up to a different way of life, a consideration of cleanliness is forced upon one; for nothing else rouses so instantaneously and violently the latent snobbery that one would fain be rid of. Religiously, politically, we are men and brothers all. Yet still-there are men we simply cannot treat as brothers. By what term of contempt (in order to justify our unbrotherliness) can we call them? Not poor men; for we have Poor but honest too firmly fixed in our minds, and we would all like a colonial rich rough diamond of an uncle to leave us money. Hardly men of no family; for men of no family are received at court. Not workmen; for behold the Carlylese and Smilesian dignity of labor! Not the masses; for the masses are supposed to be our rulers. What then can we call these people with whom we really cannot associate on equal terms? Why, call them The Great Unwashed. O felicitous phrase! O salve of the conscience! That is the unpardonable social sin. At the bot

tom of our social ladder is a dirty shirt; at the top is fixed not laurels, but a tub! The bathroom is the inmost, the strongest fortress of our English snobbery.

Cleanliness as a subject of discussion is, curiously enough, considered rather more improper than disease. Yet it has to be faced, and that resolutely, if we would approach, and approaching, understand, the majority of our fellow-creatures.

Chemically, all dirt is clean. Just as