It wuz a old schoolhouse a hundred years ago, when Wordsworth went to school there.
It is a little, old-fashioned place, and Martin put his fingers in his vest pockets, and leaned back, and looked round him some as if he wuz a-patronizin’ them old memories with which the place wuz filled.
Good land! he’d no need to; them memories towered up and filled the hull place, and floated off round it into the serene, beautiful English landscape, and up towards the blue heavens above.
Martin with his patronizin’ ways.
Martin couldn’t quell ’em down with his leanin’s back, and thumbs in his armholes, and patronizin’ ways.
I sot down to the poor, shabby old bench to which he had sot, and see the very spot where the boy Billy had cut his name in the rough old desk. Mebby he got licked for it—I shouldn’t wonder a mite. The teacher not knowin’ that though he might be slapped in youth, and laughed at by Reviewers in early manhood, yet a great man—a man of simple manners, and a soul of genius sot there at that desk, jest as the great oak wuz hid in the heart of the acorn in Billy’s pocket, mebby, at the time.
I had quite a large number of emotions as I sot there—probble upwards of seventy-five.
Wall, of course we went to Rydal Mount, the home where he lived and worked, and to Grass-mere, where he lays asleep with his kindred.
The south wind waved the branches of the trees that stood jest a little ways from the simple slabs.