From John OGroats to Lands End | Page 2

see if all
his tenants were in their appointed places.
The village inns were generally under the shadow of the church steeple,
and, like the churches, were well attended, reminding one of Daniel
Defoe, the clever author of that wonderful book Robinson Crusoe, for
he wrote:
Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The Devil always builds a
chapel there; And 'twill be found upon examination, The Devil has the
largest congregation.
The church services were held morning and afternoon, evening service
being then almost unknown in country places; and between the services
the churchwardens and other officials of the church often adjourned to
the inn to hear the news and to smoke tobacco in long clay pipes named
after them "churchwarden pipes"; many of the company who came
from long distances remained eating and drinking until the time came
for afternoon service, generally held at three o'clock.
The landlords of the inns were men of light and leading, and were
specially selected by the magistrates for the difficult and responsible
positions they had to fill; and as many of them had acted as stewards or
butlers--at the great houses of the neighbourhood, and perhaps had

married the cook or the housekeeper, and as each inn was required by
law to provide at least one spare bedroom, travellers could rely upon
being comfortably housed and well victualled, for each landlord
brewed his own beer and tried to vie with his rival as to which should
brew the best.
Education was becoming more appreciated by the poorer people,
although few of them could even write their own names; but when their
children could do so, they thought them wonderfully clever, and
educated sufficiently to carry them through life. Many of them were
taken away from school and sent to work when only ten or eleven years
of age!
Books were both scarce and dear, the family Bible being, of course, the
principal one. Scarcely a home throughout the land but possessed one
of these family heirlooms, on whose fly-leaf were recorded the births
and deaths of the family sometimes for several successive generations,
as it was no uncommon occurrence for occupiers of houses to be the
descendants of people of the same name who had lived in them for
hundreds of years, and that fact accounted for traditions being handed
down from one generation to another.
Where there was a village library, the books were chiefly of a religious
character; but books of travel and adventure, both by land and sea, were
also much in evidence, and Robinson Crusoe, Captain Cook's Three
Voyages round the World, and the Adventures of Mungo Park in Africa
were often read by young people. The story of Dick Whittington was
another ideal, and one could well understand the village boys who lived
near the great road routes, when they saw the well-appointed coaches
passing on their way up to London, being filled with a desire to see that
great city, whose streets the immortal Dick had pictured to himself as
being paved with gold, and to wish to emulate his wanderings, and
especially when there was a possibility of becoming the lord mayor.
The bulk of the travelling in the country was done on foot or horseback,
as the light-wheeled vehicles so common in later times had not yet
come into vogue. The roads were still far from safe, and many tragedies
were enacted in lonely places, and in cases of murder the culprit, when

caught, was often hanged or gibbeted near the spot where the crime was
committed, and many gallows trees were still to be seen on the sides of
the highways on which murderers had met with their well-deserved fate.
No smart service of police existed; the parish constables were often
farmers or men engaged in other occupations, and as telegraphy was
practically unknown, the offenders often escaped.
The Duke of Wellington and many of his heroes were still living, and
the tales of fathers and grandfathers were chiefly of a warlike nature;
many of them related to the Peninsula War and Waterloo, as well as
Trafalgar, and boys were thus inspired with a warlike and adventurous
spirit and a desire to see the wonders beyond the seas.
It was in conditions such as these that the writer first lived and moved
and had his being, and his early aspirations were to walk to London,
and to go to sea; but it was many years before his boyish aspirations
were realised. They came at length, however, but not exactly in the
form he had anticipated, for in 1862 he sailed from Liverpool to
London, and in 1870 he took the opportunity of walking back from
London to Lancashire in company with his brother. We walked by a
circuitous route, commencing in an easterly direction,