n of one's
faculties. This entire avoidance of flattering circumlocutions, though
it sometimes produces these rather startling effects, gives a peculiar
raciness to rustic oratory. Not long ago a member for a rural
constituency, who had always professed the most democratic sentiments,
suddenly astonished his constituents by taking a peerage. During the
election caused by his transmigration, one of his former supporters said
at a public meeting, "Mr. ---- says as how he's going to the House of
Lords to leaven it. I tell you, you can't no more leaven the House of
Lords by putting Mr. ---- into it than you can sweeten a cart-load of
muck with a pot of marmalade." During the General Election of 1892 I
heard an old labourer on a village green denouncing the evils of an
Established Church. "I'll tell you how it is with one of these 'ere
State parsons. If you take away his book, he can't preach; and if you
take away his gownd, he mustn't preach; and if you take away his screw,
he'll be d----d if he'll preach." The humour which underlies the
roughness of countrified speech is often not only genuine but subtle. I
have heard a story of a young labourer who, on his way to his day's
work, called at the registrar's office to register his father's death.
When the official asked the date of the event, the son replied, "He
ain't dead yet, but he'll be dead before night, so I thought it would
save me another journey if you would put it down now." "Oh, that won't
do at all," said the registrar, "perhaps your father will live till
to-morrow." "Well, I don't know, sir; the doctor says as he won't, and
he knows what he has given him."

The accomplished authoress of _Country Conversations_ has put on record
some delightful specimens of rural dialogue, culled chiefly from the
labouring classes of Cheshire. And, rising in the social scale from the
labourer to the farmer, what could be more lifelike than this tale of an
ill-starred wooing? "My son Tom has met with a disappointment about
getting married. You know he's got that nice farm at H----; so he met a
young lady at a dance, and he was very much took up, and she seemed
quite agreeable. So, as he heard she had Five Hundred, he wrote next day
to pursue the acquaintance, and her father wrote and asked Tom to come
over to S----. Eh, dear! Poor fellow! He went off in such sperrits, and
he looked so spruce in his best clothes, with a new tie and all. So next
day, when I heard him come to the gat