"Any one who would try. You two might help towards it. If you could seduce a few round here, and get them to be interested in your own evening occupation—books and rational conversation—and so wean them from the public-houses, it would be a great thing."
"There'd never be any good done with the men, take them as a whole, sir. They are an ignorant, easy-going lot, and don't care to be better."
"That's just it, Crouch. They don't care to be better. But they might be taught to care. It would be a very great thing if Honey Fair could be brought to spend its evenings as you spend yours. If the men gave up spending their money, and reeling home after it; and the women kept tidy hearths and civil tongues. As Charlotte does," he added looking round at her.
"There's no denying that, sir."
"I think something might be done. By degrees, you understand; not in a hurry. Were you to take the men by storm—to say, 'We want you to lead changed lives, and are going to show you how to do it,' your movement would fail, and you would get laughed at into the bargain. Say to the men, 'You shan't go to the public-house, because you waste your time, your money, and your temper,' and, rely upon it, it would have as much effect as if you spoke to the wind. But get them to come here as a sort of change, and you may secure them for good if you make the evenings pleasant to them. In short, give them some employment or attraction that will outweigh the attractions of the public-house."
"It would certainly be a good thing," said Stephen Crouch, musingly. "They might be for trying to raise themselves then."
"Ay," spoke William, with enthusiasm. "Once let them find the day-spring within themselves, the wish to do right, to be raised above what they are now, and the rest will be easy. When once that day-spring can be found, a man is made. God never sent a man here, but he implanted that within him. The difficulty is, to awaken it."
"And it is not always done, sir," said Charlotte, lifting her face from her work with a kindling eye, a heightened colour. She had found it.
"Charlotte, I fear it is rarely done, instead of not always. It lies pretty dormant, to judge by appearances, in Honey Fair."
William was right. It is an epoch in a man's life, that finding what he had not inaptly called the day-spring. Self-esteem, self-reliance, the courage of long-continued patience, the striving to make the best of the mind's good gifts—all are born of it. He who possesses it may soar to a bright and, happy lot, bearing in mind—may he always bear it!—the rest and reward promised hereafter.