address of their travellers, the sleekness of
their travellers' horses, and the good condition
of their traveller's vehicles. Part of the
travellers' good address lay in their cheerfulness
over the bottle. Business was done in
Dulminster over strong ale, and something
stronger. The traveller succeeded best who
had the strongest stomach. I remember a
gentleman connected with the spirit trade,
whose coming was eagerly looked forward to
by all who knew him. He was full of good
songs and merry stories ; pronounced on all
hands to be " as kind a hearted creature as
ever broke the world's bread." I don't know
anything of his capacity for bread ; but I
have been assured that he was man enough
to drink, with different customers, forty
glasses of different wines and spirits be-
tween breakfast and dinner ; and, after dinner,
in the travellers' room, to keep the joke
and bottle going with the stoutest and jolliest.
Fresh air and exercise could scarcely make
head against all this toping, and many a
commercial traveller was finished up after a
very few years of such industry.

The less respectable sort of travellers—
those who did not travel in gigs, but
carried small packets of specimens, and
journeyed by stage coach—put up at a class of
commercial houses, much frequented by the
farmers who came trotting into Dulminster
on market days, often with their wives,
carrying market-baskets perched behind them
on a pillion or on a second saddle. We had
then no covered Corn Market. The farmers
stood in rows behind their sacks of samples,
in. the square that fronted our old church.
In the same place was assembled the
millers and corn-factors ; each corn-factor
provided with a small portable desk ; and,
in a few hours, the business was got through
between them. During the same hours, the
farmers' wives, dispersed about the town,
were driving bargains with the housekeepers
of Dulminster for eggs and butter. Business
over, all flocked to the inns.

From the adjacent collieries came also in
long carts on market days, the pitmen and
their wives, to buy their stocks of grocery
meat, and flour.  They came as gentlemen
to combine business with pleasure,
dressed in their best clothes,— a blue-tailed
coat, with a bunch of marigolds stuck in the
bosom, gaudy flowered waistcoat, with a
bunch of official-looking seals hung by a
radiant ribbon, plush breeches, blue worsted
stockings, buckled shoes— a gorgeous creature
was a pitman in our early days at Dulminster.
He even wore abeaver hat with a narrow brim.
The pitmen and theirwives, dressed as became
the wives of such husbands, with the wages
of themselves and sons hot in their pockets,
did not confine their expenditure to
necessaries. While the wives bought the meat
and grocery, the husbands went to their inns,
and smoked pipes over ale and dominoes, or
ale and quoits ; or else they betook themselves
to the cockpits, and betted on the
main. While maing their purchases, the
women had, at every shop, a glass of neat
rum or rum shrub ; so that, towards evening
they came back merry to their partners for
a dance ; and, after many more potations
accompanied with a most frightful leaping
and stamping of feet, and many little squabbles
which produced nothing but fresh agonies of
noise— they were assorted again into their
carts as nearly as could be guessed, and
trotted out of Dulminster ; some of them
quite in the wrong direction. At about the
same time in the evening, the farmers were
getting into their saddles ; and, considering
how many of them needed to be lifted and
settled in their seats, it is remarkable that so
few necks were broken from year to year.

Then, again, there were to each inn its
regular attendants. Punctually at eight
o'clock every night, respectable elderly men
dropped in upon each other in one of the
great panelled parlours of the Dolphin, called
each for a pint of best ale and a pipe,
exchanged pinches of snuff with one another,
and, by half-past eight, the whole club of old
men, as they were called, being assembled,
the Globe and Traveller and the local paper
were produced before them. One of them
read aloud the leading news, and then all fell
to conversation over it. A second pint of ale
and one more pipe was the end of their night's
allowance, except when, on extraordinary
occasions, reason appeared for indulgence in
a glass of grog, or for the brewing of a bowl
of punch. At half-past ten, every old man
went home, and went to bed.

But sobriety was not in fashion among
younger folk. Very early in the summer
afternoons, Dulminster tradesmen became
numerous at their inns, seeking for rum
and eggs or rum and milk, purl, and
what other form there is of ale bedevilled. In the busiest time of the day, many shop-
keepers thought nothing of running from
their shops to spend three or four hours in
the tavern ; and, to be led home through the
streets by daylight, helplessly drunk, was
not thought a matter of shame, or anything in
the least degree tending to injure business.
Working men with a little spare cash would
go on Monday morning to the tap, and stick
to the ale for as many days as money lasted.
This wise financial stroke they called being
out on the fuddle. Strong ale, and not gin,
was the nectar chiefly in request ; and inn-
keepers brewed their own ale, were true to
malt and hops, stored it to acquire age, in
enormous cellars, and dispensed, therefore,
potations not so poisonous to health as those
now furnished by the spirit-merchant and the
brewhouse-chernist. I rather think, however,
that there was more noise over the cups in
Dulminster than belongs now to the pleasure
of hard-drinking. We had among us many
pensioned soldiers, who had fought under Sir
John Moore and Wellington. They brought