The amusements were various. Drinking (very popular), swearing
(ditto), quarrelling, eating pastry ginger-bread and nuts (female
pastime), and looking at a filthy Italian, leading a still more filthy
monkey, who rode on a dog (the only honest one of the three). This all
day, till night dropped down on a scene of drunkenness and vice, which
we had better not seek to look at further. Surely, if ever man was
right, old Joey Bender, the methodist shoemaker, was right, when he
preached against the revels for four Sundays running, and said
roundly that he would sooner see all his congregation leave him and go
up to the steeplehouse (church) in a body, than that they should
attend such a crying abomination.
The wrestling, the only honest sensible amusement to be had, was not in
much favour at Drumston. Such wrestling as there was was carried on in
a little croft behind the principal of the public-houses, for some
trifling prize, given by the publicans. In this place, James
Stockbridge and myself had wandered on the afternoon of the day in
question, having come down to the revel to see if we could find some
one we wanted.
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