The south side of Blewbury touched the main Reading and Wantage road, and had several inns: a “Barley Mow,” a “Catherine Wheel,” a “George and Dragon,” a “Sawyer’s Arms,” a “Load of Mischief,” and at its west end a “New Inn.” I was glad to see that the “Load of Mischief” still upheld its sign and name. I feared that it might have been renamed “The Red Lion” or the “Crown,” and have been robbed of its sign. But there was the sign, and almost opposite a window, where I was equally glad and surprised to see an advertisement of “Votes for Women.” The “Load of Mischief” was a woman, of a type belonging to a day hardly later than Hogarth’s, mounted on the shoulders of a man. The man was a mere small beast of burden. The woman was magnificent--a huge, lusty, brown virago--and she was holding in her hand a glass clearly labelled “GIN.” This woman and her ill-chosen spouse were painted on both sides of the sign-board, so that all coming from north and from south should see it. I forgot to inquire whether “The Load of Mischief” was a fully licensed house and sold gin. Probably it was. The sign was not a beerhouse’s defamation of gin. It did not deny that gin was a very good thing. It did not assert anything more than that a big, gin-drinking woman on a small man’s shoulders was a “load of mischief.” How impossible it is--even in this sporting country--to think of a sign depicting a big, gin-drinking man on a little woman’s shoulders. No woman ever painted a sign-board, I suppose, and no woman keeping an inn would put up such a one as “The Load of Mischief.” A woman who drank gin was a load of mischief. On the other hand, a man who made the gin for her, provided that he grew rich on it, became a justice of the peace or a member of Parliament; if his father made it he became a bishop. It is the difference between mind and matter, between brain-work and manual labour. The member of Parliament or the bishop’s father had only to think about gin; he might never have tasted it. The woman had to swallow it and pay for it. Therefore she grew poor while he grew rich. A history of England was once written entirely to show this difference, to insist upon it, and to teach the consumer that he must never forget his duties and responsibilities to the manufacturer, and to remind the manufacturer of his privileges. It was called “A History of England for Shoe-Blacks and Sons of Gentlemen: or, A Guide to Tuft-hunting, Sycophancy, Boot-licking, and other Services to the Aristocracy and Plutocracy, and to Keeping in Your Place.” It was published in 1911, and is used in schools.