The times were bad for most people, but at home we did not feel the pinch very much. We had the cows and the poultry and the pigs, and though oatmeal was terribly dear, twenty shillings the hoop, I never knew what it was to miss the oatmeal porridge and the abundant milk for breakfast and bacon and potatoes for dinner. On Sundays we nearly always had beef or mutton and Yorkshire pudding, and my mother's home-brewed was famous throughout all the country side. Mr. Wilson, the parson of the church, always called when he came to Holme, though my father had grieved him sore by taking a pew at Powle Moor Chapel, and sitting under that godly man, Abraham Webster; and Mr. Wilson always declared to my mother's own face that her home-brewed was better drinking than any to be got even at the Black Bull Inn, at Kitchen Fold, which boasted the best "tap" outside Huddersfield itself. Sometimes on Sundays, too, my mother had a guests' tea-drinking, and then we had buttered tea-cakes and eggs, and salad, and tea, and out were brought the silver cream jug and silver sugar tongs and spoons and the little fluted china cups and saucers, with little, pink primroses on them, that belonged to my great aunt, Betty Garside. The women-folk drank tea, but not so much, I think, that they liked it, for they had not the chance of getting used to it, but because the quality drank it, and it served to establish their rank and dignity. My father would never touch it, and I can't say I was ever partial to it myself. So you see we were not so badly-off at home. My father's custom lay mainly in the country market towns, and the high price of corn caused by the ceaseless wars kept squire and farmer in rich content, and they paid for their cloth like men. It was the manufacturers who had made and relied on a foreign market for their goods, who cursed Napoleon, and cursed, too, our own Government, that was ever at daggers drawn with him. Why could we not let the French rule their country their own way they said. What was it to us whether king or Directory or Emperor ruled in France? My father was a Whig, and swore by Mr. Fox; yet I think at first he was not sorry to see our corn so high, prices so good, and money so plentiful among the farmers. But in time the war told on all of us, our ships could not sail the seas, the mills and warehouses groaned with piled-up merchandise, and the pieces fetched so little, it was scarce worth while to cart our goods from town to town. Then every manufacturer in the West Riding called for peace, and, in time, peace at any price.