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The
Still-Room
of
clothes
and
furniture,
and
the
general
manage-
ment
of
homes
as
his
wisdom
and
sound
judgment
dictated.
All
through
the
book
runs
a
steady
stream
of
common
sense
far
removed
from
the
slushy
cant
so
prevalent
in
w^orks
of
the
kind.
"
A
couple
of
flitches
of
bacon
are
worth
fifty
thousand
Methodist
sermons
and
religious
tracts.
They
are
great
softeners
of
the
temper
and
promoters
of
domestic
harmony."
"Oak
tables,
bedsteads,
and
stools,
chairs
of
oak
or
of
yew-tree,
and
never
a
bit
of
miserable
deal
board.
Things
of
this
sort
ought
to
last
several
lifetimes.
A
labourer
ought
to
inherit
from
his
great-grandfather
something
besides
his
toil."
"
Nowadays
the
labourers,
and
especially
the
female
part
of
them,
have
fallen
into
the
taste
of
niceness
in
food
and
finery
in
dress
;
a
quarter
of
a
bellyful
and
rags
are
the
consequence.
The
food
of
their
choice
is
high-priced,
and
the
dress
of
their
choice
is
showy
and
flimsy,
so
that
to-day
they
are
ladies,
and
to-morrow
ragged
as
sheep
with
the
scab."
A
healthy
attitude
towards
the
plain
and
the
wholesome
and
the
genuine
marks
the
whole
book.
Among
other
things
ardently
desired
by
Cobbett
was
the
extension
of
the
practice
of
the
home
brewing
of
honest
beer,
and
he
denounced
the
growing
habit
of
tea-drinking
with
a
vigour
that
time
and
results
have
shown
was
not
misplaced.
He
looked
upon
tea-drinking
as
a
destroyer
of
health,
an
enfeebler
of
the
frame,
an
engenderer
of
effeminacy
and
laziness,
a
debaucher
of
youth,
7.2