"And, granting the doctrine of equality to be strictly true," continued the gentleman, "yet how long, how very long must it be, ere the race of mankind shall be able to throw off their prejudices—their present artificial condition, shall we call it?—so completely as to reinduce and reinstate that universal equality we have just agreed to be natural."
"Very sensible, sir," interjected Kucky Sarson; "but I am just thinking," he added, feeling some return of his usual confidence, "that equality never will be reinstated, unless we spread its great doctrines by all the means in our power. Equality must be enuntiated, maintained, and defended, sir; or, like other truths which have lain hid for ages, it will not produce any fruit."
"True, my good friend," answered the gentleman; "but permit me to remind you that practice is more powerful than precept. If we each sought to act towards our fellow-creatures as if they were really our brethren and sisters, the principles of a true equality would soon gain a citadel in each human heart. It is the putting into practice of this deep conviction of our common brotherhood which is really most worthy of our endeavours. We may contend against the artificial distinctions which are established among men till doomsday; but if we do not, on all occasions, display brotherly feeling towards our fellows, our contention will produce no salutary effect."
"Indeed, sir," said the barber, "I feel you are by far the more consistent philosopher of the two——"
"Nay," said the gentleman, cutting short the barber's strain of intended panegyric; "I would not have you suppose that I am a perfect practiser of the maxims I am recommending. I never yet found a man who fulfilled his own definition of a philanthropist, a patriot, or a philosopher,—that is, if his definition were worthy of being termed one. I only press this fact upon your notice, my friend: that I was once in the habit of talking as loudly about equality as yourself,—nay, even dogmatically about it, and that is not like your way of talking; but I have ceased to talk about the name, and am now endeavouring to spread the spirit of it. I try to do all the good I can, to make every one as happy as I can, to banish all the misery I can. I cannot always keep in mind that every human being I meet is my brother or sister; for the force of old habit is such that a pernicious aristocracy moves within me sometimes, but I try to keep it down. My friend, I am preaching to you, rather than conversing with you; but we will now leave this subject for some lighter theme, if you please; only permit me to say, in conclusion, that you must never believe yourself to be a thorough disciple of Equality while a grain of offence arises in your mind on seeing a gentleman converse with a gypsy."
It would be tiresome to pursue any further the conversation of the barber and the strange gentleman. Suffice it to say that Kucky Sarson was an altered man from that day, though he never saw the gentleman again. He subdued the habit of expressing his convictions in terms which he knew must give offence and create prejudice, rather than advance truth, couch them as courteously as he might in the flourish of politeness. He turned his efforts, in the humble sphere of his conventional existence, rather towards preparing the world for rigid truth, than towards impelling the people into the acknowledgment and practice of principles of which they had not as yet learned the alphabet. These changes, to Kucky Sarson's honour be it spoken, came over his spirit, not through cowardice,—for he possessed enough of strength of mind and principle to have braved a prison, had he thought his lot cast in the fitting and becoming time: it was honest conviction which acted as a mollifier of Kucky's manners, and the usefulness of the change in him was evidenced by the greater good he effected in his modified character. He preserved his grandfather's favourite saying to the last day of his life; and, as no one sought more ardently to fulfil the character of an humble philanthropist,—to alleviate distress wherever he found it,—to soften and dissipate asperity of temper, and to create the genuine feeling of brotherhood, and the practice of self-sacrifice among all men,—so his name and favourite adage were remembered after his death; insomuch that when a word tending to difference arose among the plain inhabitants of Caistor-in-Lindsey, it was usually succeeded, and the difference prevented, by some one observing, "Why, neighbours, what's the use of wrangling? You know what good Kucky Sarson used to say,—'Right is every man's, and Wrong is no man's right.'"
RAVEN DICK, THE POACHER;
OR,
"WHO SCRATCHED THE BULL?"
Kiah Dobson,—they always called him Kiah "for shortness sake," as we used to say in Lincolnshire; but his full name was Hezekiah,—Kiah Dobson was a hearty buck of a farmer, who ploughed about fifty acres, and fed sheep and bullocks on about fifty others. He was a tenant of good old Squire Anderson, the ancestor of the Yarboroughs, who are called Lords in these new-fashioned times. Lindsey and its largest landlord presented, it need scarcely be said, very different features sixty years ago to those they present now. Squire Anderson kept a coach, but he had not three or four, like his successor, the peer: he had one good house at Manby, but he had not that and a much grander one at Brocklesby, another at Appuldercome, in the Isle of Wight, and another in town.