CHAPTER X

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TALK WITH A FARMER;—WITH A TENDER-HEARTED WHEELWRIGHT.—AN AMUSING STORY.—NOTIONS OF AMERICA.—SUPPER.—SPEECH OF THE ENGLISH.—PLEASANT TONES.—QUAINT EXPRESSIONS.—THE TWENTY-NINTH OF MAY.—ZACCHEUS IN THE OAK TREE.—EDUCATION.—BED-CHAMBER.—A NIGHTCAP AND ... A NIGHTCAP.

[Sidenote: _TALK WITH A FARMER._]

On one side near the fire there was a recess in the wall, in which was a _settle_ (a long, high-backed, wooden seat). Two men with pipes and beer sat in it, with whom we fell to talking. One of them proved to be a farmer, the other a jack-of-all-trades, but more distinctly of the wheelwright’s, and a worshipper of and searcher after ideal women, as he more than once intimated to us. We were again told by the farmer that free trade was ruining the country—no farmer could live long in it. He spoke with a bitter jocoseness of the regularity of his taxes, and said that though they played the devil with every thing else, he always knew how _tithes_ would be. He paid, I think he said, about a dollar an acre every year to the church, though he never went to it in his life; always went to chapel, as his father did before him. He was an Independent; but there were so few of them thereabouts that they could not afford to keep a minister, and only occasionally had preaching. When he learned that we were from America, he was anxious to know how church matters were there. Though a rather intelligent man, he was utterly ignorant that we had no state church; and though a dissenter, the idea of a government giving free trade to all sorts of religious doctrine seemed to be startling and fearful to him. But when I told him what the rent (or the interest on the value) of my farm was, and what were its taxes, he wished that he was young that he might go to America himself; he really did not see how he should be able to live here much longer. He _rented_ a farm of about fifty acres, and was a man of about the same degree of intelligence and information that you would expect of the majority of those _owning_ a similar farm with us. Except that he was somewhat stouter than most Yankees, he did not differ much in appearance or dress from many of our rather old-fashioned farmers.

The tender-hearted wheelwright could hardly believe that we were really born and brought up in America. He never thought any foreigners could learn to speak the language so well. He too was rather favourably struck with the idea of going to America, when we answered his inquiries with regard to mechanics’ wages. He was very cautious, however, and cross-questioned us a long time about the cost of every thing there—the passage, the great heat of the climate, the price of beer; and at length, touching his particular weakness, he desired to be told candidly how it would be if he should marry before he went. If he should get a wife, a real handsome one, would it be safe for him to take her there? He had heard a story—perhaps we knew whether it was true or not—of a man who took a handsome wife out with him, and a black man, that was a great rich lord in our country, took a great liking to her, and offered the man ten thousand pounds for her, which he refused; and so the great black lord went away very wroth and vexed. When he was gone, the woman upbraided her husband: “Thou fool, why didst thee not take it and let me go with him? I would have returned to thee to-morrow.” Then the man followed after the black lord, and sold his wife to him for ten thousand pounds. But the next day she did not return, nor the next, neither the next; and so the man went to look for her; and lo! he found her all dressed up in silk and satin, ’lighting from a coach, and footmen waiting upon her. So he says to her, “Why didst thee not return the next day?” “_Dost take me for a fool, goodman?_” quoth she, and stepped back into her fine coach and drove off; and so he lost his handsome wife.

Besides the kitchen, there were, on the lower floor of the inn, two or three small dining or tea rooms, a little office or accounting closet for the mistress, and a _tap-room_, which is a small apartment for smoking and drinking. These are all plainly but neatly furnished. There is a large parlour above stairs, somewhat elegantly furnished. The kitchen, tap-room, and office are low rooms, and over these is the parlour. The dining-rooms are higher, and over them are the bed-chambers. Thus the parlour is allowed a high ceiling, level with the eaves of the roof, and you enter it from a landing some steps lower than the bed-chambers. The latter are carried up under the roof, with dormer windows, and are very pleasant rooms. It will be seen that all the travellers’ rooms or apartments are thus made spacious at the expense of height in the others, and that yet there is a convenient arrangement and connection of the whole.

We had supper in a little back room, as neat as care and scouring could make and keep it. The table was much such a one as Mrs. Marcombe, in Hanover, would have set for a couple of tired White Mountain pedestrians, except the absence of any kind of cakes or pies. The ham had a peculiar taste, and was very good, C. says, the least unpleasant of any he was ever tempted to eat. It had been dried by hanging from the ceiling of the kitchen, instead of being regularly _smoked_, as is our practice. The milk and butter (which was not in the least salted) were very sweet and high-flavoured.

[Sidenote: _THE ENGLISH IN CONVERSATION._]

In the evening we had a long talk with the old woman and her daughter. The latter was a handsome person with much such a good, beaming face as her mother, but with youth, and more refinement from education and intelligence. She also was a widow with two sweet, shy little girls.

There are peculiarities in the speech of these women that would distinguish them anywhere from native Americans. Perhaps the novelty of them is pleasing, but it has seemed to us that the speech of most of the people above the lowest class of labourers that we have met, is more agreeable and better than we often hear at home. Perhaps the climate may have effect in making the people more habitually animated—the utterance more distinct and varied. Sentences are more generally finished with a rising inflection, syllables are more forcibly accented, and quite often, as with our landlady, there is a rich musical tone in the conversational voice to which we are not yet so much accustomed, but that it compels us to listen deferentially. I wonder that beauty of speech is not more thought of as an accomplishment. It is surely capable of great cultivation, and should not be forgotten in education.

Except in the lower class, the choice of words seems often elegant, and we hear very few idiomatic phrases or provincialisms. Where we do notice them, in the class I am now speaking of, it would not seem an affectation of singular language in an educated person with us, but rather a fortunate command of vigorous Saxon words. We have never any difficulty in understanding them, while we do sometimes have to reconstruct our sentences, and find substitutes for some of our words, before we are plainly understood. The “H” difficulty is an exception to all this, with nearly all the people, except the most polished, that we have met. Is it not singular? Among the lowest classes, however, there are many words used that puzzle us; others are pronounced curiously, and many of our common words are used in new combinations. There is an old-fashioned, quaint set of words in common use that we only understand from having met with them in old books—in the Bible, for instance. The words _Master_ and _Mistress_ (instead of Mister and Misses, as we have got to pronounce them), and _lad_ and _lass_, are usual. “_Here, lad!_” “_Well, Maister?_” I first heard in the Liverpool market. I passed a man there, too, leading a dray-horse, with a heavy load, up one of the steep streets. He was encouraging him in this way: “Coom on, my lad! Coom on, my good lad!” When he had reached the brow he stopped and went before the noble beast, who, with glistening eyes, and ears playing beautifully, bowed his head to be patted, “_Good lad! good lad! Well, thee’s done it!_”[8]

[8] A gentleman, riding towards Chowbet, and seeing a boy in the road, shouted out to him, “My lad, am I half-way to Chowbet?” Young Lancashire looked up at the querist, and said, “Hah con aw tell, tha’ foo’, when I doon’t know wheear ta’ coom fra?”—_Liverpool paper._

* * * * *

We had noticed yesterday in Liverpool that the omnibuses were decorated with branches of trees, ribbons, and flags; the union-jack (British ensign) was hoisted in several places, the children seemed to be enjoying a half-holiday in the afternoon, and once we saw them going together in an irregular procession, carrying a little one dressed with leaves and crowned with a gilt-paper cap, and singing together in shrill chorus some verses, of which we only understood the frequent repetition of the words: “The twenty-ninth of May! the twenty-ninth of May!” It occurred to C. to ask whether all this was intended to celebrate any thing. “Oh, surely,” our hostess said, “it was the twenty-ninth of May—King-Charles-and-the-Oak day.” In her husband’s time, they used always to keep it in good style, ornamenting their house all over with oak boughs, and all the stage-coaches and the horses used to be decked with oak boughs too. “How beautifully,” says C., aside, “do such pretty simple customs keep alive the remembrance of old historic facts!” “But why do they carry about the _child_?” She did not recollect clearly, but she had the impression that King Charles was a baby when it occurred. She had forgotten exactly how it was, she said, “but it told all about it in the Bible.” “In the Bible! mother; you mean in the History of England, do you not?” said her daughter, smiling. “Was it?” replied the old lady, “I never had time to read much in the large History of England. Let me see—why, no; now I am sure it was in the Bible. Don’t you remember—what’s his name—Zack—Zack—Zacheriah? yes, Zacheriah; how he climbed up into an oak tree to see King Charles go by!”

[Sidenote: _SCRIPTURAL EDUCATION._]

A large and most powerful class, including many even of the more conservative of the dissenters in England, are terribly afraid of a national system of education that shall be free from Church influence. The people had better be left to grow up in ignorance, rather than that they should not be instructed in theological dogmas. I have actually heard a refined and educated gentleman, occupying an influential position, advocate the idea that all the education the common people needed was so much as would enable them to read their Bible, prayer-book, and catechism. Except for this, he would never let them have a teacher, but would leave them to the parson. He would break up every dissenter’s school—have no school in the land that was not a part of the Church. The godless system of education which was now favoured in high quarters (on the plan of our New England common schools!) he verily believed, if adopted, would be a national sin that God would arise in his anger to punish.

Our landlady had lived almost to old age under the shadow of the Church, in which the story of Zaccheus is every year read aloud, and in which a religious celebration of the restoration of King Charles is by law performed every 29th of May. But a person of sound faculties, native-born, could not probably be found in New England, whose godless education would not have made impossible such a confusion of religious instruction as had been given her.[9]

[9] There is a service for the 29th of May in the Book of Common Prayer, which, by royal order (commencing “_Victoria Regina_. It is our Royal Will and Pleasure,” &c., and countersigned by Lord John Russell on the 21st of June, 1837), is to be performed in every church, college, and chapel in the United Kingdom every year. It is most blasphemously absurd and false in its historical allusions and slavish moralizings.

I am writing now in my bedroom. Though the ceiling is low, it is large and well furnished. There are large pitchers of water, foot-bath, and half a dozen towels. The bed is very large, clean, and richly curtained. The landlady has sent me up a glass of her home-brewed beer, with a nightcap which I noticed she hung by the fire when I left the kitchen. The chambermaid has drawn down the bed-clothes, and says, “The bed has been well aired, sir.” Good night.

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