“Ah’m puzzeld wi’ t’ craad” (crowd), answered the offender.
After hearing many more fragments of West Riding dialect, I forced my way to the railway-station, and went to Bradford. Few towns show more striking evidences of change than this; and the bits of old Bradford, little one-story tenements with stone roofs, left standing among tall and handsome warehouses, strengthen the contrast. Bradford and Leeds, only nine miles apart, have been looked upon as rivals; and it was said that no sooner did one town erect a new building than the other built one larger or handsomer; and now Bradford boasts its St. George’s Hall, and Leeds its Town Hall, crowned by a lofty tower. But what avails a tower, even two hundred and forty feet high, when a letter was once received, addressed, “Leeds, near Bradford!”
Your Yorkshireman of the West Riding is, so Mrs. Gaskell says, “a sleuth-hound” after money. As there is nothing like testimony, let me end this chapter with a brace of anecdotes, and you, reader, may draw your own inference.
Not far from Bradford, an old couple lived on their farm. The good man had been ill for some time, when the practitioner who attended him advised that a physician should be summoned from Bradford for a consultation. The doctor came, looked into the case, gave his opinion; and descending from the sick-room to the kitchen, was there accosted by the old woman, with,
“Well, doctor, what’s your charge?”
“My fee is a guinea.”
“A guinea,—doctor! a guinea! And if ye come again will it be another guinea?”
“Yes; but I shall hardly have to come again. I have given my opinion, and leave the patient in very good hands.”
“A guinea, doctor! Hech!”
The old woman rose, went upstairs to her husband’s bedside, and the doctor, who waited below, heard her say, “He charges a guinea. And if he comes again, it’ll be another guinea. Now what do ye say?—If I were ye, I’d say no, like a Britoner; and I’d die first!”