1903 The still-room by C. Roundell

The Still-Room

of clothes and furniture, and the general manage- ment of homes as his wisdom and sound judgment dictated. All through the book runs a steady stream of common sense far removed from the slushy cant so prevalent in w^orks of the kind. " A couple of flitches of bacon are worth fifty thousand Methodist sermons and religious tracts. They are great softeners of the temper and promoters of domestic harmony." "Oak tables, bedsteads, and stools, chairs of oak or of yew-tree, and never a bit of miserable deal board. Things of this sort ought to last several lifetimes. A labourer ought to inherit from his great-grandfather something besides his toil." " Nowadays the labourers, and especially the female part of them, have fallen into the taste of niceness in food and finery in dress ; a quarter of a bellyful and rags are the consequence. The food of their choice is high-priced, and the dress of their choice is showy and flimsy, so that to-day they are ladies, and to-morrow ragged as sheep with the scab." A healthy attitude towards the plain and the wholesome and the genuine marks the whole book. Among other things ardently desired by Cobbett was the extension of the practice of the home brewing of honest beer, and he denounced the growing habit of tea-drinking with a vigour that time and results have shown was not misplaced. He looked upon tea-drinking as a destroyer of health, an enfeebler of the frame, an engenderer of effeminacy and laziness, a debaucher of youth,

7.2