Christmas, too, was then a season of peculiar indulgence and
conviviality, and a round of entertainments was given, consisting of tea
and supper. Excepting at these two periods, visiting was almost entirely
confined to tea-parties, which assembled at three o'clock, broke up at
nine, and the amusement of the evening was commonly some round game at
cards, as Pope Joan, or Commerce. The lower class was then extremely
ignorant, and all classes were very superstitious; even the belief in
witches maintained its ground, and there was an almost unbounded
credulity respecting the supernatural and monstrous. There was scarcely
a parish in the Mount's Bay that was without a haunted house, or a spot
to which some story of supernatural horror was not attached. Even when I
was a boy, I remember a house in the best street of Penzance which was
uninhabited because it was believed to be haunted, and which young people
walked by at night at a quickened pace, and with a beating heart. Amongst
the middle and higher classes there was little taste for literature, and
still less for science, and their pursuits were rarely of a dignified or
intellectual kind. Hunting, shooting, wrestling, cock-fighting,
generally ending in drunkenness, were what they most delighted in.
Smuggling was carried on to a great extent; and drunkenness, and a low
state of morals, were naturally associated with it.
Pages:
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59