At This Particular Village They Were Exceptionally Given
To Backbiting, Perhaps Because Everybody Was More Than Usually Related To
Everybody; They Hated Each Other And Vilified Each Other With Pre-Eminent
Energy.
The poorest man, half starving, would hardly do a job for a
farmer because - because - because he did not
Know why, except that nothing
was too bad to be said of him; the poorest washerwoman with hungry
children would not go and do a day's work for Mrs. So-and-so, because
'she beant nobody, she beant no better than we; beant a-going to work for
her.' This malice was not directed towards strangers, against whom it is
natural to heave half a brick, but against their own old neighbours. They
tore each other to pieces, they were perfect cannibals with the tongue,
perfect Lestrigonians. They never said 'good morning' to an equal, or
lifted their hats to a lady; a jerk of the head, say about half an inch
from the perpendicular, was their utmost greeting; their manners were
about as pleasant as those of cattle might be could they be dressed like
human beings. True, Bethel was of modern date, but they had had resident
vicars for centuries; and where had they been, and where was the
humanising tendency of much-vaunted Christianity? Could not three
centuries soften a little village? I will do something for them if I can,
for the credit of the race at large; they shall not be without an excuse
if I can help it. Perhaps it was because there were no resident squires,
perhaps because a good many of them had little plots of land; still they
were Lestrigonians, and no doubt the row between the elder and the pastor
was really due to this malice and uncharitableness. How curious it seems
to a philosopher that so much religion should be accompanied by such
bitter ill-feeling! - true religion, too, for these Lestrigonians were
most seriously in earnest in their chapelling. Yet no doubt they fomented
the row, for the pastor himself was much too clever a man to proceed to
such extremities. By nature he was a fluent speaker, rising to eloquence
as eloquence is understood among that kind of audience. He carried them
with him, quite swept them away. They came to hear him from miles round
about; there were plenty of other chapels, but no one like the man at
Bethel. Once they came they always came. Who can name a country clergyman
with university training who can do this? The man at Bethel also
possessed a natural talent of personally impressing and gaining the
good-will of every person with whom he came in contact; it was
astonishing with what tenacity people clung to him, so that there must
have been something exceptional in his character. His origin was of the
humblest; he was drawn from the same class as the apostles, as the great
Fisherman, and the great Tentmaker, a man of manual labour lifted
entirely by his wit to be a very great power indeed in the community
where he was stationed.
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