t stood in the corner of one of
the home fields, and marked the boundary of the farm in that direction.
If the measure of its girth would be interesting to the reader to know,
it was just twenty-seven feet: not the largest in England certainly,
notwithstanding which the tree was one of the grandest and most
beautiful. It towered high into the air and spread its stalwart branches
like giant trees in all directions. It was said to be a thousand years
old, and to be inhabited by owls and ghosts. Whether the ghosts lived
there or not I am unable to say, but from generation to generation the
tradition was handed down and believed to be true. Such was Mr.
Bumpkin's home, in my dream: the home of Peace and Plenty, Happiness and
Love.

The man who was contemplating Mr. Bumpkin's pigs on this same Sunday
morning was also a "self-made man," whose name was Josiah SNOOKS. He was
not made so well as Bumpkin, I should say, by a great deal, but
nevertheless was a man who, as things go, was tolerably well put
together. He was the village coal-merchant, not a Cockerell by any
means, but a merchant who would have a couple of trucks of "Derby
Brights" down at a time, and sell them round the village by the
hundredweight. No doubt he was a very thrifty man, and to the extent, so
some people said, of nipping the poor in their weight. And once he
nearly lost the contract for supplying the coal-gifts at Christmas on
that account. But he made it a rule to attend church very regularly as
the season came round, and so did Mrs. Josiah Snooks; and it will require
a great deal of "nipping" to get over that in a country village, I
promise you. I did not think Snooks a nice looking man, by any means;
for he had a low forehead, a scowling brow, a nobbly fat nose, small
eyes, one of which had a cast, a large mouth always awry and distorted
with a sneer, straight hair that hung over his forehead, and a large scar
on his right cheek. His teeth were large and yellow, and the top ones
protruded more, I thought, than was at all necessary. Nor was he
generally beliked. In fact, so unpopular was this man with the poor,
that it was a common thing for mothers to say to their children when they
could not get them in of a summer's evening, "You, Betsy," or "You, Jane,
come in directly, or old Snooks will have you!" A warning which always
produced the desired effect.

No one could actually tell whether Snooks had made money or merely
pretended to po