my bedroom window to watch the lurid light flaring up into the black clouds around, which told how wicked men were at their mad work, how fiendish passion had triumphed, how some honest farmer was reduced to ruin, as he saw the efforts of a life of industry consumed by the incendiary’s fire. It was long before I ceased to shudder at the name of ‘Swing.’ The dialect of the village was, I need not add, East Anglian. The people said ‘I woll’ for ‘I will’; ‘you warn’t’ for ‘you were not,’ and so on. A girl was called a ‘mawther,’ a pitcher a ‘gotch,’ a ‘clap on the costard’ was a knock on the head, a lad was a ‘bor.’ Names of places especially were made free with. Wangford was ‘Wangfor,’ Covehithe was ‘Cothhigh,’ Southwold was ‘Soul,’ Lowestoft was ‘Lesteff,’ Halesworth was ‘Holser,’ London was ‘Lunun.’ People who lived in the midland counties were spoken of as living in the shires. The ‘o,’ as in ‘bowls,’ it is specially difficult for an East Anglian to pronounce. A learned man was held to be a ‘man of larnin’,’ a thing of which there was not too much in Suffolk in my young days. A lady in the village sent her son to school, and great was the maternal pride as she called in my father to hear how well her son could read Latin, the reading being reading alone, without the faintest attempt at translation. Sometimes it was hard to get an answer to a question, as when a Dissenting minister I knew was sent for to visit a sick man. ‘My good man,’ said he, ‘what induced you to send for me?’ ‘Hey, what?’ said the invalid. ‘What induced you to send for me?’ Alas! the question was repeated in vain. At length the wife interfered: ‘He wants to know what the deuce you sent for him for.’ And then, and not till then, came an appropriate reply. This story, I believe, has more than once found its way into _Punch_; but I heard it as a Suffolk boy years and years before _Punch_ had come into existence. One of the prayers familiar to my youth was as follows: ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Bless the bed that I lie on; Four corners to my bed, Four angels at my head; Two to watch and one to pray, And one to carry my soul away.’ An M.P., who shall be nameless, supplies me with an apt illustration of East Anglian dialect. It was at the anniversary of a National School, with the great M.P. in the chair, surrounded by the benevolent ladies and the select clergy of the district. The subject of examination was Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on an ass’s colt. ‘Why,’ said the M.P.—‘why did they strew rushes before the Saviour? can any of you children tell me?’ Profound silence. The M.P. repeated the question. A little ragamuffin held up his hand. The M.P. demanded silence as the apt scholar proceeded with his answer. ‘Why were the rushes strewed?’ said the M.P. in a condescending tone. I don’t know,’ replied the boy, ‘unless it was to hull the dickey down.’