which word “rather” ended every verse of a somewhat vulgar ditty. She did not get the prize, nor did the matron whom I fixed on as the winner, who sang without a hitch a monotonous and, I began to think, never-ending ballad on the rivalries of “young Samuèl” and one “Barnewell” for the graces of an undecided young woman. The attention with which this somewhat dreary narrative was listened to deceived me, for the prize went, without public protest, to a young woman of whose song I could not catch a line, though I could just gather that it was feebly sentimental. My impression is that it was her bright eyes, and pretty face and figure, that carried it with the judges, rather than her singing. If I am right, it will neither be the first nor last time that the prizes in this world fall to _tes beaux yeux_. The school faces the upper end of the village green, and I left it so crowded that it was a wonder how the dancers could get along at all with their polkas and handkerchief dances, the latter a kind of country dance, which were the only ones in vogue. When I got out, I saw lighted booths at the other end of the green, and went down to inspect. It was a melancholy sight. There was the publican’s dancing-booth without a soul in it. One swing only was occupied in the neighbouring acrobatic apparatus, and the round-about was motionless. The gipsies were there, ready and eager to tell fortunes, and with a well-lighted alley for throwing at cocoa-nuts with bowls rather larger than cricket-balls--the most modern and popular substitute, I am told, for skittles. There they were, but not a customer in sight, the only human being but myself being the solitary county policeman, who patrolled the green with most conscientious regularity, only slackening his pace for a moment or two as he passed under the bright open windows of the schoolroom, from which the merry dance-music came streaming out into the moonlight. I could almost find it in my heart to pity the publican and gipsies, so overwhelming did their defeat seem, for not a glass of beer had been allowed all day in the vicar’s fields, where the cricket-match had been played and all the races run, on milk, tea, or aerated waters. The whole stock of these last beverages, supplied from the “Hope Coffee Room,” which has faced the public-house on the village green now for about three years, was drunk out before the dancing ended and the school closed on “veast” night, to the exceeding joy of the vicar’s niece and her lieutenants, two bright Cornish damsels, handy, devoted, and ardent teetotalers. These three have been fighting the publicans since 1886, when they started the “Hope Coffee Room,” supplied with bread, butter, and cakes from the vicarage, and aerated drinks and light literature, all, I take it, at something under cost price, though this the three ardent damsels will by no means admit. The vicar, who is no teetotaler himself, shrugs his shoulders