“Is that what you mean?” Yes! it was that. “Well I’ve been a thinking, if the old devil had laid a bit longer and been afflicted same as some on ’em, as he’d a been the better for it. Ain’t there no more o’ that there little hymn, sir?”
The religious talk of our Arcadians is sometimes very trying—trying I mean to any man with only too keen a sense of the ludicrous, and who would not for the world betray himself if he could help it.
It is always better to let people welcome you as a friend and neighbour, rather than as a clergyman, even at the risk of being considered by the “unco guid” as an irreverent heathen. But you are often pulled up short by a reminder more or less reproachful, that if you have forgotten your vocation your host has not; as thus:—
“Ever been to Tombland fair, Mrs. Cawl?” Mrs. Cawl has a perennial flow of words, which come from her lips in a steady, unceasing, and deliberate monotone, a slow trickle of verbiage with never the semblance of a stop.
“Never been to no fairs sin’ I was a girl bless the Lord nor mean to ’xcept once when my Betsy went to place and father told me to take her to a show and there was a giant and a dwarf dressed in a green petticoat like a monkey on an organ an’ I ses to Betsy my dear theys the works of the Lord but they hadn’t ought to be shewed but as the works of the Lord to be had in remembrance and don’t you think sir as when they shows the works of the Lord they’d ought to begin with a little prayer?”
* * * * *
There is one salient defect in the East Anglian character which presents an almost insuperable obstacle to the country parson who is anxious to raise the tone of his people, and to awaken a response when he appeals to their consciences and affections. The East Anglian is, of all the inhabitants of these islands, most wanting in native courtesy, in delicacy of feeling, and in anything remotely resembling romantic sentiment. The result is that it is extremely difficult, almost impossible, to deal with a genuine Norfolk man when he is out of temper. How much of this coarseness of mental fibre is to be credited to their Danish ancestry I know not, but whenever I have noticed a gleam of enthusiasm, I think I have invariably found it among those who had French Huguenot blood in their veins. Always shrewd, the Norfolk peasant is never tender; a wrong, real or imagined, rankles within him through a lifetime. He stubbornly refuses to believe that hatred in his case is blameworthy. Refinement of feeling he is quite incapable of, and without in the least wishing to be rude, gross, or profane, he is often all three at once quite innocently during five minutes’ talk. I have had things said to me by really good and well-meaning men and women in Arcady that would make susceptible people swoon. It would have been quite idle to remonstrate. You might as well preach of duty to an antelope. If you want to make any impression or exercise any influence for good upon your neighbours, you must take them as you find them, and not expect too much of them. You must work in faith, and you must work upon the material that presents itself. “The sower soweth the word.” The mistake we commit so often is in assuming that because we sow—which is our duty—therefore we have a right to reap the crop and garner it. “It grows to guerdon after-days.”
Meanwhile we have such home truths as the following thrown at us in the most innocent manner.
“Tree score? Is that all you be? Why there’s some folk as ’ud take you for a hundred wi’ that hair o’ yourn!”
Mr. Snape spoke with an amount of irritation which would have made an outsider believe I was his deadliest foe; yet we are really very good friends, and the old man scolds me roundly if I am long without going to look at him. But he has quite a fierce repugnance to grey hair. “You must take me as I am, Snape,” I replied; “I began to get grey at thirty. Would you have me dye my hair?” “Doy! Why that hev doyd, an’ wuss than that—thet’s right rotten thet is!”