instances, they have introduced it with a veto on all music, games, and recreations, fearing that they may thus make the publichouse too attractive. Therefore, it is again prevented from taking its natural place in village social life, and there is a feeling of restricted freedom that works against the natural expression of pleasure in living and friendly intercourse. It does not seem to be understood that the village public-house is primarily for the village man, and that he is the final arbiter of its tone, which can only be raised by increasing his self-respect and self-education. Experience shows that this is best done by pointing an ideal, but by giving him liberty to follow it. Repression results either in encouragement deliberately to flout it, or in driving him elsewhere where there are no restrictions, but also no ideals. This is not to say that the public-house is to be open to him to get drunk in as much and as often as he likes, but that it is his to amuse himself in as he wishes within the bounds of reason and common decency.

The desire for music, games, and amusements is fairly universal, and surely innocent enough, and if it is sin to enjoy them to the accompaniment of modest alcoholic refreshment, most of us are guilty. If his natural instinct for such things is thwarted, there is grave danger that they will turn inwards to less healthy channels, and harmless amusement will be transmuted into secret vice. To the ordinary village man the drinking of beer is a blameless act, and by constantly suggesting to him, directly and indirectly, that it is an evil and undesirable habit, the effect in the end must be demoralising and degrading. Human nature being what it is, there is a fatal fascination that always accompanies anything that is designated as 'wicked.'

Let there be impromptu music, then, if the patrons of the village inn feel the need of it, also ' peg and ring,'' shove ha'penny,' dart competitions, and any other harmless recreation that men who work eight and ten hours a day in all weathers may desire. The farm labourer's life is not so full of joy that he can afford to give up the only two things approaching luxuries that he has—the village public-house and a few ounces of tobacco a week, both of these already taxed so prohibitively that they are almost out of his reach. The public-house must be made clean, airy and attractive, so that the suggested stigma on it may be removed. It is either right or wrong that it should exist. If we decide it is. wrong, it should be abolished, but so long as we agree to its existence, only a bad purpose is served by drinking behind closed windows and in squalid surroundings, as if trying to hush up some clandestine sin. The best way to raise the status of the publichouse is by regarding it as a clean, healthy institution that meets a need of the community, and a place to which a man may go with

his wife and feel he is doing no more wrong than the city clerk who goes to a tea-shop.

In the warm weather a man should be able to sit in the garden with his wife and engage in friendly converse with his neighbours over a glass of ale or anything else, while there seems no reason why he should not be able to play a game of bowls or skittles on the lawn if he feels inclined. Nothing could be more demoralising than the present suggestion of secrecy and wrongdoing, and the worst stricture on what the public-house has been reduced to is that in most villages a man nowadays is not in the habit of taking his wife there. The presence of womenfolk should surely be a refining influence, and by making it customary for men to go there with their wives, one of the best incentives would be given to make it a place of good reputation.

Most of the village inns are fairly roomy, and the best arrangement would seem to be for three rooms to be set aside for patrons. (1) The bar parlour, for the men only.

(2) A room for cards, newspapers and magazines, where noise and talking are not encouraged.

(3) A common room for men and women.

With the landlord paid a fixed salary as manager and given the profit on everything except alcoholic drinks, and surplus profits devoted to schemes of general utility to the village, the publichouse becomes virtually a village co-operative concern, in which the influence and character of the landlord play a most important part. It is obvious, therefore, that the village should have a voice in choosing him, and this might be done by any prospective landlord having to be passed by a committee of, say, the vicar, the squire, a leading tenant farmer and two representatives of the labourer class. This should ensure a suitable man being chosen. He should be held responsible for good conduct in his house, and, in cases of drunkenness, severely penalised if it could be proved that he was the last person to serve the man who was drunk.

The object in view would be to supply a need which the villages feel and no other institution quite fulfils, to promote freedom of speech and social intercourse, recreation and enjoyment of life, without encouraging the sale of alcohol or indecent rowdiness. The village man needs encouragement to express himself, and it is hypocritical heresy to assume that what he would express will necessarily be unpleasant. In spite of all the ancient tales of beer drinking in villages, the rural population has always been the most robust and healthy in the community, just as the village man, on the whole, has always been the most decent-living. But if there is one thing for which he has a supreme and wholesome dislike, it is for being 'managed' or 'improved,' and it calls up all the old Adam in him. At the same time, however, he is not

a man of great education, and knows it, and will therefore at times be easily impressed by the words of others who he thinks are more learned than he is. The result has been that although he has steadfastly refused to be turned away from the publichouse, he has come to look on it as a not very moral institution, from which he cannot, or will not, keep away. It is difficult to imagine anything worse for his character.

Of all these things the landlord and I talked in the parlour of the little inn set down in this Hampshire village. Darkness fell, and we talked far into the evening, while he told me many tales of the village, the public-house, and their past glories. He saw me to the door at last, and I looked out on the quiet stillness that falls early in such places. Ghosts must be very happy in a country village, for there is so little to disturb them, and they are always so near in the memory of the living. Commercialism and brewery companies seem extraordinarily out of place in such a setting-almost as distantly connected with village life as the activities of well-meaning temperance reformers who have lived all their lives in towns. But that, I suppose, is why they are temperance reformers.

L. F. EASTERBROOK.

A DAY IN MY GARDEN

No one who has not had that happy experience can ever picture the delights of a garden in the glorious setting of Vancouver Island. The deep, deep blue of the sea, the distant range of Olympic mountains capped with snow, all the depth of colour lent by pines, by hemlock and spruce, seem only to enhance the vividness and depth of colour of our gardens.

It is almost hopeless to give people accustomed to dull, leaden skies any idea of the glistening beauty of Vancouver Island.

It is difficult to determine at what time of the day a garden is at its best—perhaps the very early morning, for everything tends then to beautify, the flowers fresh and sweet with heavy dews, the rising sun flooding the heavens with a sea of gold, tinging the mountains with a deep pink. Mount Baker, that wonderful sugar-loaf-shaped mountain in Washington State, rising proudly above its fellows, gradually takes on a cloak of crimson which spreads to the Olympic range.

Everywhere the mists are golden, pink or mauve; the forests shrouded in these mists have a mysterious beauty that holds one spellbound. This, then, is the setting of my garden. It is far too lovely to remain happily within four walls, and out in the garden the air, keen and fresh at first as it blows across from the snowcapped mountains, is filled with delicious scent of flowers.

The garden, as gardens go, is not large, nor is it at all out of the ordinary, but it is a perfect riot of colour and of scent.

Whether it is some quality in the climate, or whether it is the rich soil, dark, almost black, I cannot say, but, whatever the reason, the flowers are intense in colour and yield most profusely, in some cases the green leaves quite hidden by the blossom.

When we bought the bungalow it had, for some time past, evidently been the dumping ground for tins and rubbish of the whole neighbourhood, and my heart sank as I ruefully surveyed it and wondered how we should cope with it and its tins and rubbish. Fortunately for me, the friend who was living with me is a descendant of John Evelyn,' and, I am sure, has inherited his gardening proclivities. She saw at once the possibilities, and set vigorously to work, cleared the tins away, dug up dozens, requisitioned a man

with a barrow to cart them away, and before long the poor little dumping ground was reduced to order and ready for its seeds and bulbs. This was in October; the following spring and summer the garden was gay enough to gladden anyone's heart, and a source of bewilderment and at first derision to the menfolk of the neighbourhood. They would lounge up on a Sunday and lean smoking on our fence, and in audible tones demand caustically of each other, what them women think they're a-doin' of,' and they would expectorate meditatively into the unfortunate garden (to our huge annoyance), but we persevered, and ere long, as they realised how the garden was shaping, our scoffers (and, I believe, tin-dumpers) hied them home to their own neglected gardens and started vigorously, with more zeal than wisdom, to see if they could outshine us. One man got in three loads of manure (at $5 a load), and his garden did not need one; another man bought up hundreds of plants and seedlings, spent a small fortune on them and put them in so close together, you could not get a fork in between; and yet another man, in a sudden fit of neighbourliness, invaded our garden and commenced pruning everything in sight, till a wrathful' John Evelyn' saw him and ejected him without ceremony from the garden. But to return to our flowers. The pansies alone attracted people from all parts to see and admire them. We had carpeted our rose garden with pansies in huge patches of purple, wine-red, mauve, yellow and white. Their growth is wonderful-the blossoms measure from 3 to 3 inches across, and the stems 7 and 8 inches in length, thick and sturdy ; but oh the work that they entail! Day by day the dead blossoms have to be picked off, and one must do it in exactly the right way, and keep them well soaked, for they are always thirsty and resent any shortage of water; but they repay one over and over again. We have kept them in blossom ten months of the year. We put them also in the window-boxes, purple and wine-red, a fine show and much appreciated by the humming-birds.

My delphiniums are a joy to me: they look lovely in the sunlight, a long row of every shade of blue, standing in big clumps like proud sentinels headed by a big bush of anchusa; behind them all one catches beautiful views of distant snow mountains and Mount Baker, no longer pink, but glistening white, as if in bridal attire. In front of them we have planted many coloured foxgloves: one kind in particular I like, a beautiful salmon-pink ; and we made a border of deep purple lobelia, which looks like a broad purple ribbon. To the left there is a delightful corner, 6 feet across, in which we have planted Shirley poppies, and at the back of them cornflower. Evidently there is keen rivalry between them all, for they have grown taller and taller-cornflower trying to eclipse poppies-till they are about 3 to 4 feet high and cover the