What girl of 20 to 30 would willingly stay for more than two years in a country village from five to ten miles distant from a railway station, with no shop windows to look at, and no eligible young men to look at her? “For either it was different in blood, (O cross! too high to be enthralled to low) Or else misgraffed in respect of years, (O spite! too old to be engaged to young.)” In North Wales I hardly ever saw a village school mistress other than a married woman. Owing to the deplorably low moral tone of the people it was said to be impossible for a single girl to hold such an appointment. In Norfolk there was not a shadow of hesitation on this account: brains were scarce there, as everywhere, but morals were sound: a good girl at £50 was better than a bad man at £80, and the managers took their chance of the good girl who would go, in preference to the bad man who would stay. I have my old official note-books of that time, recording the school statistics and draft reports, and I see that in two autumn weeks I inspected a total of 606 children at a cost to the country in travelling expenses of £11. In Manchester, 30 years later, I could find 600 children in a single department of a school by spending twopence on a tram-car, and the day’s travelling from doorstep to doorstep might take 40 minutes. In Norfolk the real labour of the day was the travelling, and it would often take two hours’ drive to reach a school with no more children than you could put in a tram-car. Yet there were compensations in these long drives. The dearth of railways made it worth the while of the hotel proprietors to keep good cattle, and the horses were splendid. I have driven 14 miles in an hour, without use of whip, to catch a train. Equally precious were the drivers. O Charlie B.! aged friend and charioteer for three years. How many miles we journeyed behind that black horse, or those black horses; and how delightful was your conversation! We began daily with the same opening: He: “Let’s see: where is it tu this marnin? Norton? (_meditatively_) Norton Red Lion? (_he always associated the village with its inn_). Neow which way du thet lay, I wonder?” I: “According to the map it is beyond Weston.” He: “Weston Black Dog: why I was there last week for a funeral: let me see, where did I fetch that corpse from?” For when not driving me and the black horse to school, he was driving the black horse, or horses, in a hearse to a funeral; and during the Burial Service he baited the horses and himself at the “Red Lion” or the “Black Dog.”