“The House! Hes tha forgotten that the English Government must hev its usual Easter recreation whativer comes or goes? I told thee—I told thee in my first letter to Annis, that parliament hed given themsens three weeks’ holiday. They feel a good bit tired. The Bill hed them all worn out.”
“I remember! I had forgotten The Bill!”
“Whativer hes tha been thinking of to forget that?”
“Where then are you going to-day, father?”
“I doan’t just know yet, Dick, but——”
“Well, I know where I am going,” said Mistress Annis. “I have an engagement with Jane and Katherine at eleven and I shall have to hurry if I am to keep it.”
“Somewhere to go, or something to do. Which is it, Annie?”
“It is both, Antony. We are going to Exeter Hall, to a very aristocratic meeting, to make plans for the uplifting of the working man. Lord Brougham is to be chairman. He says very few can read and hardly any write their names. Shocking! Lord Brougham says we ought to be ashamed of such a condition and do something immediately to alter it.”
“Brougham does not know what he is talking about. He thinks a man’s salvation is in a spelling book and an inkhorn. There is going to be a deal of trouble made by fools, who want to uplift the world, before the world is ready to be uplifted. They can’t uplift starving men. It is bread, not books, they want; and I hev allays seen that when a man gets bare enough bread to keep body and soul together, the soul, or the mind, gets the worst of it.”
“I cannot help that,” said Mistress Annis. “Lord Brougham will prove to us, that body and mind must be equally cared for or the man is not developed.”