Welsh Journals

me to Hardy's novels, Ragget's stout in a pub in Oxford Street, cod cutlets in a restaurant off Ludgate Circus, Defoe's Plague, "The Pilgrim's Progress," and to Robert Blatchford's writings in the Clarion. It was Blatchford's simple grandeur that led me to discover the English Bible. So what schoolins failed to do this young shop-assistant from Lampeter did educate me. I joined a grammar class at Toynbee Hall, but I gave it up for grammar is the study of a lifetime. Then I joined a composition class at the Workingmen's College and I wrote Cockney stories after the manner of Edwin Pugh and Arthur Morrison. I showed them to my friend and he said You don't know what you're writing about. Tell stories about people .you know-the Welsh." I filled a penny exercise book, both sides, with a Welsh love-story. This doesn't sound true," I said to myself. Any Welsh preacher could have written it." I let years go by. Somehow I came to read Genesis again and when I was about the middle of it Jiw-Jiw this is English writing I said to me. On a Saturday night I went to the Hammersmith Palace and there I saw Marie Lloyd, and Jiw-Jiw," I said to me, ft she tells a story not by what she says but by what she does not." I kept up Genesis and Marie Lloyd. Cant and humbug and hypocrisy and capel belong to Wales and no one writing about Wales can dodge them. I do not think my stuff has done Wales any good. It is not in me to do that. It is not in anyone. Memories of Farming in the Vale of Towy By H. JONES-DAVIES THE 1870's was a period of prosperity, the golden age of agriculture, in no small measure due to the repercussions of the Franco-German War. France, although saddled with a huge indemnity, surprised the world by paying it off so quickly, largely aided through being a country of small peasant proprietors. Germany on the other hand, though victorious, was not prosperous, hence the German bands ill-clad and ill-shod that toured our country gathering coppers. At this period