6/11 No one who knows working people can deny that the demand for it exists. A fitter on weekly wages used to show in a poor cottage one of the best collections of British butterflies and moths, made entirely by himself. Many of them had been captured late at night on Chat Moss. A hair-dresser has told how to watch the habits of birds was the delight of his Sunday bicycle rides; his assistant called attention to some little known poet whose works had a special appeal for him; another said it was the study in his rare holidays at the seaside and in local museums of some form of animal life--the name of it, now forgotten, would convey no meaning to most University graduates--that made his interest in life. You may find a large audience of workmen interested in a lecture on Shelley, and some of them as well acquainted with his poems as the lecturer. |