vantage of combining the receipt of a fair sum of money for some local purpose with the pleasure of an evening's amusement. This was commonly known as a "tea-meeting," being a joint affair of soirée and conversazione, where a certain number of ladies banded together to provide each a tea-tray, containing twelve cups and saucers, and cake in a like proportion. The china and eatables having been conveyed to a given spot, the doors were thrown open at an hour agreed upon beforehand, and, on the payment of a fixed sum, usually one shilling, the public were admitted, for whom the ladies forthwith commenced pouring out tea. When this had continued a sufficient length of time the trays were cleared away, and speeches made, interspersed with singing.
There was generally a "tea-meeting" on occasion of the fair, and, as I have already noticed, sometimes a ball, the discussions as to which hotel it should be held at out of four that our town boasted, or whether it should be held, not at a hotel at all but at "the Mechanics'," occupying as much time as a long parliamentary debate, with such frequent adjournments as sometimes to threaten the young people with a total postponement of their dance for another twelvemonth.
The one week over, the curtain dropped on all gaiety, harmless or otherwise, and hard unremitting work had to begin afresh. An occasional wedding might have broken through the sameness of the routine had the spot been anywhere else in the world's geography, but in five years not one marriage of persons belonging to the upper class occurred in our district.
Sometimes the young people could not maintain the
