Interruptions of “No, no!”
“Because, if you allow me, I am not in the best of moods. I have had an attack, a damned—I beg your pardon, a dastardly attack made on me in the public papers, and I have been—I have been represented—that is, represented as a monster of iniquity, one who is ruining the country, and driving trade out of it.”
“No, no!”
“I was never more astonished and shocked in my life. I did think, gentlemen and ladies, that, if there was one thing I cherished and loved, and strove to live for it was—that is to say—it was my country, and next to my country, my dear old—my dear old mother county.”
General emotion, and some of the ladies who had taken more than two glasses of sherry felt the tears rise into their eyes. Every gentleman kindled and stamped and said, “Hear, hear!”
“But,” continued Lord Lamerton, re-adjusting his balance, by putting one foot between the rails of the chair, and the other on a hat of a gentleman, that was on the floor near him, and removing his hand from his trouser to his waistcoat pocket, “but, ladies and gentlemen, I will pass from personal matters to the subject in hand.” (Then, to himself, “Confound the rector, I can see by the twinkle of his eye that he knows what is coming.”) “But, ladies and gentlemen, we are here assembled on an august and interesting occasion, perhaps one of the most august and interesting that could have arisen—I mean, I mean, a ploughing-match. And this recalls me to the fact that one of our earliest English poets, William Langland, who lived in the reign of Richard II., wrote an entire poem on—what do you suppose? Ploughing. He entitled his poem, ‘The Vision of Piers the Ploughman.’ And, what would you think gentlemen and ladies, was the drift of this remarkable composition? We know that long before, centuries earlier, Virgil wrote his ‘Georgics,’ in praise of agriculture, but here, our English poet confined himself to one branch of agriculture, and that, ploughing. And the author represents all men—mark me—all men, as ploughmen, all, from the king on his throne and the parson in the pulpit, to the least among us all, as ploughmen set to make our furrows in the great field of the world. And, ladies and gentlemen, each has his own proper furrow to run, and he may make it well, or make it badly, plough deep, or merely skirt the soil, plough straight, or run a feeble, fluttering, irregular line, or he may even fold his hands, and take a snooze in the hedge, and make no attempt to plough.”
A pause: the gentleman whose hat had been converted into a footstool recovered the crushed article from under the foot of the speaker, and cast at him a melancholy, reproachful glance.
“I beg your pardon, ’pon my soul, I did not mean it. I did not observe it.” This was said aside to the sufferer. Then after a complete rearrangement of his attitude, with his legs very wide apart, like that of the Colossus of Rhodes, Lord Lamerton continued, “Ladies and gentlemen! I am much afraid that some of us—I will not say all—for I do not believe it is true of all—I say some of us, and God knows, I include myself, on looking back at our furrows do not find them as we should have wished; do not derive, I mean, much satisfaction in the retrospect; but—but—let me see. Yes!” He leaned both his hands on the table, so that his back was curved, and his position was far from elegant. “But, ladies and gentlemen, the broad fact remains, that we are all ploughboys together, and we must take a lesson from these hearty good fellows we have seen to-day, and in all we do and undertake, make our furrows straight, and drive them deep.”
“Hear! Hear! Hear!” and much thumping and stamping; in the midst of which Lord Lamerton sat down, and nearly missed his chair in so doing. Then he leaned over to the rector, and said, “All my lady’s; ’pon my soul, all. Never read a line of what’s-his-name in my life. She has—she reads everything.”
Lord Lamerton returned to Orleigh by an evening train. The station was at some distance from his place. Only when the new line was made would he have a station near at hand.