tly
gilding. Under his plastic hand trifles rise into importance; the
nonsense of one age becomes the wisdom of another; the levity of the wit
gravitates into the learning of the pedant, and an ancient farthing
moulders into infinitely more value than a modern guinea.

[Illustration: The Farm-House]

THE FARM-HOUSE

--Love and hay
Are thick sown, but come up full of thistles.

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

I was so much pleased with the anecdotes which were told me of
Ready-Money Jack Tibbets, that I got Master Simon, a day or two since,
to take me to his house. It was an old-fashioned farm-house, built of
brick, with curiously twisted chimneys. It stood at a little distance
from the road, with a southern exposure, looking upon a soft green slope
of meadow. There was a small garden in front, with a row of beehives
humming among beds of sweet herbs and flowers. Well-scoured milking
tubs, with bright copper hoops, hung on the garden paling. Fruit trees
were trained up against the cottage, and pots of flowers stood in the
windows. A fat superannuated mastiff lay in the sunshine at the door;
with a sleek cat sleeping peacefully across him.

Mr. Tibbets was from home at the time of our calling, but we were
received with hearty and homely welcome by his wife--a notable, motherly
woman, and a complete pattern for wives, since, according to Master
Simon's account, she never contradicts honest Jack, and yet manages to
have her own way, and to control him in everything. She received us in
the main room of the house, a kind of parlour or hall, with great brown
beams of timber across it, which Mr. Tibbets is apt to point out with
some exultation, observing that they don't put such timber in houses
now-a-days. The furniture was old-fashioned, strong, and highly
polished; the walls were hung with coloured prints of the story of the
Prodigal Son, who was represented in a red coat and leather breeches.
Over the fireplace was a blunderbuss, and a hard-favoured likeness of
Ready-Money Jack, taken, when he was a young man, by the same artist
that painted the tavern sign; his mother having taken a notion that the
Tibbetses had as much right to have a gallery of family portraits as the
folks at the Hall.

The good dame pressed us very much to take some refreshment, and tempted
us with a variety of household dainties, so that we were glad to
compound by tasting some of her home-made wines. While we were t