The Latin reply had upon the schoolmaster the effect which the mason's sign is said to produce on the brethren of the trowel. He was at once interested in the learned traveller, listened with gravity to his story of a tired horse and a lost shoe, and then replied with solemnity, “It may appear a simple thing, most worshipful, to reply to you that there dwells, within a brief mile of these TUGURIA, the best FABER FERARIUS, the most accomplished blacksmith, that ever nailed iron upon horse. Now, were I to say so, I warrant me you would think yourself COMPOS VOTI, or, as the vulgar have it, a made man.”
“I should at least,” said Tressilian, “have a direct answer to a plain question, which seems difficult to be obtained in this country.”
“It is a mere sending of a sinful soul to the evil un,” said the old woman, “the sending a living creature to Wayland Smith.”
“Peace, Gammer Sludge!” said the pedagogue; “PAUCA VERBA, Gammer Sludge; look to the furmity, Gammer Sludge; CURETUR JENTACULUM, Gammer Sludge; this gentleman is none of thy gossips.” Then turning to Tressilian, he resumed his lofty tone, “And so, most worshipful, you would really think yourself FELIX BIS TERQUE should I point out to you the dwelling of this same smith?”
“Sir,” replied Tressilian, “I should in that case have all that I want at present—a horse fit to carry me forward;—out of hearing of your learning.” The last words he muttered to himself.
“O CAECA MENS MORTALIUM!” said the learned man “well was it sung by Junius Juvenalis, 'NUMINIBUS VOTA EXAUDITA MALIGNIS!'”
“Learned Magister,” said Tressilian, “your erudition so greatly exceeds my poor intellectual capacity that you must excuse my seeking elsewhere for information which I can better understand.”
“There again now,” replied the pedagogue, “how fondly you fly from him that would instruct you! Truly said Quintilian—”
“I pray, sir, let Quintilian be for the present, and answer, in a word and in English, if your learning can condescend so far, whether there is any place here where I can have opportunity to refresh my horse until I can have him shod?”
“Thus much courtesy, sir,” said the schoolmaster, “I can readily render you, that although there is in this poor hamlet (NOSTRA PAUPERA REGNA) no regular HOSPITIUM, as my namesake Erasmus calleth it, yet, forasmuch as you are somewhat embued, or at least tinged, as it were, with good letters, I will use my interest with the good woman of the house to accommodate you with a platter of furmity—an wholesome food for which I have found no Latin phrase—your horse shall have a share of the cow-house, with a bottle of sweet hay, in which the good woman Sludge so much abounds, that it may be said of her cow, FAENUM HABET IN CORNU; and if it please you to bestow on me the pleasure of your company, the banquet shall cost you NE SEMISSEM QUIDEM, so much is Gammer Sludge bound to me for the pains I have bestowed on the top and bottom of her hopeful heir Dickie, whom I have painfully made to travel through the accidence.”