Still, there
is something. Down in the village, and opposite the curiously carved
fountain, is a schoolroom which can accommodate a couple of hundred
people on a pinch. There are our public meetings held. Musical
entertainments have been given there by a single performer. In that
schoolroom last winter an American biologist terrified the villagers,
and, to their simple understandings, mingled up the next world with
this. Now and again some rare bird of an itinerant lecturer covers dead
walls with posters, yellow and blue, and to that schoolroom we flock to
hear him. His rounded periods the eloquent gentleman devolves amidst a
respectful silence. His audience do not understand him, but they see
that the clergyman does, and the doctor does; and so they are content,
and look as attentive and wise as possible. Then, in connection with the
schoolroom, there is a public library, where books are exchanged once a
month. This library is a kind of Greenwich Hospital for disabled novels
and romances. Each of these books has been in the wars; some are
unquestionably antiques. The tears of three generations have fallen upon
their dusky pages. The heroes and the heroines are of another age than
ours. Sir Charles Grandison is standing with his hat under his arm. Tom
Jones plops from the tree into the water, to the infinite distress of
Sophia.
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