I Looked At The Modern
Charcoal-Burner With Interest.
He was brown, good-looking, upright, and
distinctly superior in general style to the common run of working men.
He
spoke without broad accent and used correct language; he was well
educated and up to the age. He knew his own mind, and had an independent
expression; a very civil, intelligent, and straightforward man. No rude
charcoal-burner of old days this. We stood close to the highway road; a
gentleman's house was within stone's throw; the spot, like the man, was
altogether the reverse of what we read in ancient story. Yet such is the
force of association that I could not even now divest myself of those dim
memories and living dreams of old; there seemed as it were the clank of
armour, a rustic of pennons in the leaves; it would have been quite
natural to hold bow and arrow in the hand. The man was modern, but his
office was ancient. The descent was unbroken. The charcoal-burner traced
back to the Norman Conquest. That very spot where we stood, now
surrounded with meadows and near dwellings, scarcely thirty years since
had formed part of one of the largest of the old forests. It was forest
land. Woods away on the slope still remained to witness to traditions. As
the charcoal-burner worked beside the modern highway, so his trade had
come down and was still practised in the midst of modern trades, in these
times of sea-coal and steam.
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