In London The Least Trifle Is Snapped Up Immediately, And There
Is A Great Crush And Press For Permission To Earn A Penny, And That Not
In Very Dignified Ways.
In the country it is quite different.
Large
fortunes have been made out of matches; now your true country cottager
would despise such a miserable fraction of a penny as is represented by a
match. I heard a little girl singing -
Little drops of water, little grains of sand.
It is these that make oceans and mountains; it is pennies that make
millionaires. But this the countryman cannot see. Not him alone either;
the dislike to little profits is a national characteristic, well marked
in the farmer, and indeed in all classes. I, too, must be humble, and
acknowledge that I have frequently detected the same folly in myself, so
let it not be supposed for an instant that I set up as a censor; I do but
delineate. Work for the cottager must be work to please him; and to
please him it must be the regular sort to which he is accustomed, which
he did beside his father as a boy, which - his - father did, and - his -
father before him; the same old plough or grub-axe, the same milking, the
same identical mowing, if possible in the same field. He does not care
for any new-fangled jobs: he does not recognise them, they have no - locus
standi - - they are not established. Yet he is most anxious for work, and
works well, and is indeed the best labourer in the world.
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