The Welsh costume survives almost solely in the picture-
postal cards, though perhaps in the hilly fastnesses the women
still wear the steeple-crowned hats which we associate with the
notion of witches; when they come to market in Aberystwyth they
wear hard, shiny black straw hats like the men's. Amongst the
throng of Saturday-night shoppers I saw none of the drunkenness
that one sees so often in Scottish streets, and in English
cities, and, I grieve to say, even in some New England towns. In
the Welsh quarter Sunday was much more the Sabbath than it was on
the Terrace, where indeed it seemed a day of pleasure rather than
praise.
VII
All the week I had the best intention of hearing the singing in
some of the Welsh churches, but my goodwill could not carry the
day against the fear of a sermon which I should not understand. A
chance sermon would probably have touched upon the education act
which was then stirring all Dissenting England and Wales to
passive resistance, and from Lincolnshire to Carnarvonshire was
causing the distraint of tables and chairs, tools, hams, clocks,
clothing, poultry, and crops for the payment of such part of the
Dissenters' taxes as would go to the support of the Church
schools.
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