“Ban’t that gude-fashioned larnin’?” asked the scholar in triumph. And the ancient cynic answered him:
“Be gormed if I sees the use of it! Knawledge ain’t nothin’ ’less you can put it to a purpose.”
There was an awkward pause, then another spoke:
“Come to think o’t, theer ban’t ’zactly any use to it, be theer?”
“All the same, souls, ’tis a purty thing,” argued the Jacky-Toad’s personal friend.
“But I’ve got purtier,” said the traveller, though in a crestfallen voice. “I’m thinkin’ I shan’t please ’e, but I’ll give ’e a bit o’ poetry whether or no.”
Then he recited to them the first verse of Longfellow’s “Excelsior,” to which they listened with patient attention.
“The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore ’mid snow and ice,