Mushroom Town

f any great love of cleanliness, but because by washing unbidden he acquired the right to retort, when the order to wash came, "I have

tic one, had been immensely advanced thereby. This real advance had taken place principally after working hours. In such cases there is usually a young clerk or market-man ready to take the son of the firm into his charge, and a certain Jack Webster had had the bringing of John Willie out. This he had done at football matches, in the dr

summer, as the snail crept forward yar

ad been a kid and immature. It was in the summer of 1884 that the snail's antenn? approached within sight of Llanyglo, and, rain or shine, permitted or forbidden, John Willie spent most of his waking hours among the masons and smiths and navvies and plate-layers who formed the population of that nomad town of wood and earth and sleepers and rolling stock and escaping steam and corrugated iron. He knew half the men by name. He joined them at dinner when the great buzzer told half a county that it was half-past twelve. He knitted his brows over the curling and thumb-m

father was one of Edward Garden's week-enders. He was making the plans of a second house, not far from where Terry Armfie

), a place for children and for such of their elders as sought a quiet not to be found at Blackpool nor the Isle of Man, a spot unvisited by trippers, "select," a little on the expensive side, where an acquaintance struck up between families might without too much risk be improved afterwards, where the nurses would be uniformed and the luggage would be sent on in advance, where a wealthy patron might even build a house of his own (if he could get the land), a "nice" place, a place you c

g and end of the summer season, but not the Worcester dinner-service, nor the glass that filled its cupboards, nor the linen in its closets, nor the blankets nor the eiderdowns set by for winter, nor the few-the rather few-books. Mrs. Garden herself had told Howell Gruffydd that it was not likely that the place would be locked up for the winter months again. Edward Garden intended to spend more and more time there; indeed he must, unless by and by he would look musingly and a little ill-favouringly through his glasses at that sparse line of bathing-tents and that little knot of combination-

again as he saw the gradual change in that standard, and contrasted the things he saw with the things he remembered in his own early days. In those days, expressly taken holidays had been unheard-of things. Folk's excursions had reached little farther afield than their own legs could carry them. If John Pritchard, of Llanyglo, had never been to Porth Neigr, many and many a Manchester man of the days of Edward Garden's boyhood had never been to Liverpool. Many thousands had never seen the sea. It had been holiday enough in those days to meet in

urham and West Ham, at Ayr and Lanark and Swansea, at Sheffield and Manchester and Liverpool and Leeds and Hull. Over his glasses and under his glasses Edward Garden noted them, and inferred that the sum of it all was that folk intended to have a better time than they had been having. They were quite unmistakably resolved to have a much better time. Their grandfathers' idea of a Wakes Week, for example, might have been staying at home and timing the pigeons into the cote; but they meant to improve on that. They intended to doff their clogs and to put on their thinnest shoes, to draw extravagant sums from th

ns. He asked for nothing but uncoloured data. Therefore, and to that extent, Llanyglo's future was not entirely in his hands. It was still free, and always, always, save for a little rising of new stone h

ice their distance away. They had brought a small moveable platform and reading-desk from the Baptist Chapel, and first John Pritchard, and then Howell Gruffydd had mounted it. The sun beat on the bare heads and best bonnets and black-coated shoulders of p

now with them, now listening with little gestures of encouragement and nods of pleasure

aid, waving his arms and beating with his foot to the accelerated time.

r leading, they went t

ad rolled drunkenly over the sandhills to the Kerrs' house, a fear had weighed on the chapel-goers of Llanyglo. Until then, their children had known nothing of

rinted words into his pocket and shepherded the row

and we have to dig you out. Miss Pritchard, give Gwen Roberts her sunbonnet, if you please, or she catss a sunstroke. Ithel, where is your h

dens) that while some boys might go to Railhead to play, boys like some he would not mention, who had lived in large towns, yet it would be bet-ter if they kept themselves to themselves.... He did not go the length of asserting that all good boys were Welsh and country boys, and that all bad ones were town-bred and English, but-but-well, things have to be put a littl

rewards of virtue. He turned with an

trouble if I do! But yess, I will tell them.-Atten-sson now. Hugh Morgan, do not scratss your

knew better than to ask an audience questions it could

ey are right. There is to be a Treat for the Sunday School scholars! There now! And there will be races, and prizes, and tea, and the b

Williams!"

something else too. He is giv-ing-I have seen them-new pictures-pictures of the construc-ti

cended. The croupy shrilling of a cock came from down by the beach. The bees droned, and th

re assembled was another sunken way, and along this way somebody was approaching. Probably in complete unconsciousness that any hearer was at hand, thi

ts title Glan Meddwdod Mwyn (which words mean Fair, Kind Drunkenness) has no such reticence. It depicts ... but you can see the difference for yourself. No wonder it froze the words on Howell Gruffydd's lips. In the singer's

d them that, since their language provided equally for th

rub in the lees of their

gh Morgan had

s (their) song passed o

e was a hollowness now in his exhortation. He felt as if he had been building a wall against a contagion that crept in upon the invisible air. If Thomas Kerr knew Glan Meddwdod Mwyn

owell thought) b

ar the fervour with which Eesaac Oliver on

yed a minor part. This persecution was at the hands of John Willie Garden. For, in an unguarded moment, Eesaac Oliver had confided to John Willie his pl

go to Je-

to get some

ever see,

could not understand why anybody wanted to g

it woul

y with Sis

ever see,

rt of his chosen career to do so, Eesaac Oliver would very expressl

cared what the enterprise was all about. They knew that the railway was a railway, but beyond that, none of its dividends being destined for their pockets, it was merely the job-"the" job, the job of the moment, the job not very different from the last job, and very, very like all the other jobs to come, until their living hands should become as stiff as the picks they plied, and the light of their eyes be extinguished as their own lanterns were extin

in the world thereby; he was a West Riding navvy, whom twenty years of digging up the length and breadth of England had delo

ould not have got another pennyweight of fat off

f Snell that mar-ried t

' youngest, t' Princess Alix. I knaw all t' lot on 'em; t' missis hed all their pic'ters o' biscuit-bo

s. The Prinss of Wales, say you? If I wait for the Prinss of Wales to give me ano-ther piece of this ba-con I wait a long time, whatever

ceremony if he could get away from school. The Cardiff man wagged his head. Th

ill wagging. "I not be work-king here with my shi

m. "T' schools is all my backside! They learn 'em a lot o' newfangled stuff, but I remember 'at whe

Burkie, talk-king agai

ght, for

ul study of which had led Edward Garden to the conclusion that a generation had arisen that intended

re sighed to think that, among so many, many other changes, it would be only one change the more. His sales of land had provided him with just enough money to last his time out, and on the whole he thought he did not want to outlive his time. Perhaps he too had had his glimpse of that vision of Edward Garden's, though as it were in obverse; and, looking, he shrugged his shoulders. Who, in another twenty or thirty years, would care for the things he had cared for? Who would waste a thought on antiquity? Who would open his County History, or his books on Brasses or Church Plate, Memorials or Heraldry or Glass? Who would know each tree he came upon on his walks, as a country doctor knows his patients-its sickness, its health, its need of air, its treatment, its amputations? Who would repair the staircase at the Plas, and restore its magnificent ceilings, and

what was left of tha

ing a little wistfully both at onc