PREFACE.

TWENTY years ago, a friend and relative of mine, made a tour in the eastern counties, and addressed assemblies of the working-classes in many towns and villages through a district of a hundred miles.

On his return, he placed his notes and journals in my hands, that I might use any facts of his experience that were likely to be beneficial to others.

The incidents recorded of the Village Club, which had been gathered by my friend from the schoolmaster, who is introduced, owe nothing more to me than being put into consecutive form. The clubs that are held at public-houses, whether like this one, merely of a convivial character, or those that are so falsely called "Benefit Clubs,” would no doubt supply, to any one who investigated, records as startling and affecting as those presented in these pages. The "Benefit" is all on the side of those who sell the strong drink on Club-nights, and never with those who drink them.