talk of weather or wages, of their troubles in
this place or their good luck in that; whether
they are telling a story, or proposing a toast,
or giving an order, or finding fault with the
beer, these men seem to be positively
incapable of speaking without an allowance of
at least five foul words for every one fair
word that issues from their lips. English is
reduced in their mouths to a brief vocabulary
of all the vilest expressions in the language.
This is an age of civilisation; this is a
Christian country; opposite me I see a
building with a spire, which is called, I
believe, a church; past my window, not an
hour since, there rattled a neat pony chaise
with a gentleman inside, clad in glossy black
broad cloth, and popularly known by the
style and title of clergyman—and yet, under
all these good influences, here sit twenty or
thirty men whose ordinary table-talk is so
outrageously beastly, and blasphemous that
not one single sentence of it, though it lasted
the whole evening, could be printed, as a
specimen, for public inspection, in the pages
of this journal.  When the intelligent foreigner
comes to England, and when I tell him (as I
am sure to do) that we are the most moral
people in the universe, I will take good care
that he does not set his foot in a secluded
British village when the rural population is
reposing over its mug of small-beer after the
labours of the day.

I am not a squeamish person, neither is
my wife, but the social intercourse of the
villagers drives us out of our room, and sends
us to take refuge at the back of the house.
We gain nothing, however, by the change. The
back parlour, to which we have now
retreated, looks out on a bowling-green; and
there are more benches, more mugs of beer,
more foul-mouthed villagers on the bowling-
green.  Immediately under our window is a
bench and table for two, and on it are seated a
drunken old man and a drunken old woman.
The aged sot in trousers is offering marriage
to the aged sot in petticoats, with frightful
oaths of endearment.  Never before did I
imagine that swearing could be twisted to
the purposes of courtship.  Never before did
I suppose that a man could make an offer of
his hand by bellowing imprecations on his
eyes, or that all the powers of the infernal
regions could be appropriately summoned to
bear witness to the beating of a lover's heart
under the influence of the tender passion.
I know it now, and I derive so little
satisfaction from gaining the knowledge of it,
that I determine on having the two intolerable
old drunkards removed from the window,
and sent to continue their cursing courtship
elsewhere.  The ostler is lounging about the
bowling-green, scratching his bare brawny
arms and yawning grimly in the mellow
evening sunlight.  I beckon to him, and ask
him if he does not think those two old people
have had beer enough?  Yes, the ostler thinks
they have.  I inquire next if they can be
removed from the premises, before their
language gets worse, without the risk of making
any great disturbance.  The ostler says, Yes,
they can, and calls to the potboy.  When
the potboy comes, he says,  "Now then,
Jack!" and snatches the table away from
the two ribald old people without another
word.  The old man's pipe is on the table;
he rises and staggers forward to possess
himself of it; the old woman rises, too, to hold
him by the arm for fear he should fall flat on
his face.  The moment they are off the bench,
the potboy snatches their seat away from
behind them, and quietly joins the ostler who
is carrying their table into the inn.  None of
the other drinkers laugh at this proceeding,
or pay any attention to it; and the two
intoxicated old people, left helpless on their
legs, stagger away feebly without attracting
the slightest notice.  The neat stratagem
which the ostler and the potboy have just
performed is evidently the customary and
only possible mode of letting drinkers know
when they have had enough, at the Nag's
Head.  Where did those savage islanders
live whose manners a certain sea-captain
once upon a time described as no manners at
all, and some of whose customs he reprobated
as being very nasty?  If I did not know that
we are many miles distant from the coast, I
should be almost disposed to suspect that the
seafaring traveller whose opinion I have just
quoted had been touching at the Nag's
Head.

As it is impossible to snatch away all the
tables and all the benches of all the company
drinking and swearing in front of the house
and behind it, I inquire of the ostler, the
next time he comes near the window, at what
time the tap closes?  He tells me at eleven
o'clock.  It is hardly necessary to say that
we put off going to bed until that time.  At
eleven we retire, drenched from head to foot,
if I may so speak, in floods of bad language.
I cautiously put my head out of window, and
see that the lights of the tap-room are really
extinguished at the appointed time.  I hear the
drinkers oozing out grossly into the pure
freshness of the summer night.  They all
growl together; they all go together.  All?
Sinner and sufferer that I am, I have been
premature in arriving at that happy conclusion!
Six choice spirits, with a social horror
in their souls of going home to bed, prop
themselves against the wall of the inn, and
continue the evening's conversazione in the
darkness.  I hear them cursing at each other
by name.  We have Tom, Dick, and Sam,
Jem, Bill, and Bob to enliven us under our
window, after we are in bed.  They begin
improving each other's minds, as a matter of
course, by quarrelling.  Music follows and
soothes the strife, in the shape of a local duet,
sung by voices of vast compass, which soar in
one note from howling bass to cracked treble.
Yawning follows the duet; long, loud, weary
yawning of all the company in chorus.  Then