The stranger would expect to find Northampton, as a factory town, a place of squalor and grime; but coming here, and emerging into the market-place from the not very pleasing entrance, his expectations are utterly shattered. There are few towns of the size of Northampton—whose population is now considerably over 89,000—that are so bright and clean, and prosperous-looking, as this; and the stranger, to whom its Radical politics are familiar, and to whom its choice for many years of such Parliamentary representatives as Mr. Henry Labouchere and Bradlaugh argued (reasonably or not I will not declare) brutality and atheism, is pleasurably surprised at not finding the ancient and beautiful churches of the town become “temples of Reason,” lecture-halls, or other things in the secular way. Nor does he perceive, as he had half-anticipated, scowling Radical-Atheists engaged in violence, or shouting insults after the clergy and every person with a good coat upon his back. The picture thus drawn seems farcical, but it does by no means belie the ideas of a great many people who have never been in Northampton and instinctively form a picture of it from tales of its ancient election turbulence and from its choice of representatives in modern times. Northampton is nothing like that: dignity and beauty characterise its chief streets, and municipal effort so long ago as 1864 sought to beautify the town with a splendid Guildhall. Poetry springs—albeit unconsciously—even in the breasts of its Town Councillors and Poor Law Guardians: where none would seek it. Sir William Gilbert makes Bunthorne suspect, in _Patience_, that Nature, in all thy works Something poetic lurks, Even in colocynth and calomel [Sidenote: _POETRY_] How true that is! Even in the prosaic person of a Poor Law Guardian, the fount of true poesy may be bubbling, all unknown; as in that of a member of the Board of Guardians at Northampton, who, in January 1907, challenged the workhouse master’s expenditure of £6 10s. on marking-ink. Said he (he bore the great name of Dickens), lisping in numbers: I want to speak to you and the Board very plain; I trust my appeal will not be in vain; I hope you will pause and seriously think Before ordering any more marking-ink. It does not quite scan, but to a man who speaks poetry unawares, inspired by such a domestic detail as marking-ink, a little practice should make perfect. To what heights might he not rise on the subject (say) of baths or drains!