To understand a nation you must go to the cottager.
The well-to-do are educated, they have travelled, if not in their ideas,
they are more or less cosmopolitan. In the cottager the character stands
out in the coarsest relief; in the cottager you get to 'bed-rock,' as the
Americans say; there's the foundation. Character runs upwards, not
downwards. It is not the nature of the aristocrat that permeates the
cottager, but the nature of the cottager that permeates the aristocrat.
The best of us are polished cottagers. Scratch deep enough, and you come
to that; so that to know a people, go to the cottage, and not to the
mansion. The labouring man cannot quickly alter his ways. Can the
manufacturer? All alike try to go in the same old groove, till disaster
visits their persistence. It is English human nature.
APRIL GOSSIP
The old woman tried to let the cuckoo out of the basket at Heathfield
fair as usual on the 14th; but there seems to have been a hitch with the
lid, for he was not heard immediately about the country. Just before that
two little boys were getting over a gate from a hop-garden, with handfuls
of Lent lilies - a beautiful colour under the dark sky. They grow wild
round the margin of the hop garden, showing against the bare dark loam;
gloomy cloud over and gloomy earth under. 'Sell me a bunch?' 'No, no,
can't do that; we wants these yer for granmer.' 'Well, get me a bunch
presently, and I will give you twopence for it.' 'I dunno.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 237 of 394
Words from 63578 to 63854
of 105669
