"That's what they like. Give young people a few pence to rattle in their trousers' pockets, a collar, cuffs, a sixpenny signet ring on the little finger, a nickel-silver mounted cane and a pair of gloves, and there they go, not caring a fillip whether their parents have toiled and struggled to rise to their present position, ignoring the necessity of thrift, a happy-go-lucky generation. And then, at the end of it all, a deep chasm, into which they will all fall headlong; an immense pyre that will consume all their vanities and profligacies."
"They deserve to be burnt, indeed they do, uncle."
"Someone was even talking of establishing a public library here. Well let them complete the ruin. It is as well. I hope to be dead by that time though. Life, then, will be intolerable. I hope to sleep with those worthy champions of labour—my ancestors—in the churchyard yonder.
"Books!—what do they want books for? I never yet knew a man who read books that was worth a farthing.
"I knew one once who was versed in book-lore, but, worse luck to him, he could not bind a wheat-sheaf or weed a perch of parsnips, and the result—bankruptcy; failure. That's what it comes to.
"Books!—do they want to make schoolmasters of us all, or do they wish us to be always reading our eyes out instead of attending to our business?
"Books!—they are only good for idle loafers; they offer an excuse for shunning one's duty. 'I want to read a bit,' they say when told to do something. 'Oh, let me just finish this page, it is so interesting,' they plead, when asked to quickly fetch some article. This is what Adèle used to do, but I nipped this slothful tendency in the bud. I would have none of it."
He stopped his discourse and his walk, gazed at his nephew who had fallen across the table and was now sleeping soundly; then recommenced his peregrinations.
"I am disgusted with the world; I don't know what it will all come to. Some of these modern farmers are even discarding the grande charrue. Oh! shades of our ancestors. The great plough—the only feast of the year that is worth anything, mutton and roast beef, ham and veal, cider by the gallon and a jovial company of good old sons of the soil.