e forward to perform farces.
After the first diffidence had worn off, they took a keen delight in the
preparations, working hard and cordially; they were singularly ready to
be shown what to do, and to be criticized. "Knock-about" farce--the
counterpart in drama of their comic songs--pleased them best, and they
did well in it. But "Box and Cox" was almost beyond them, because they
missed the meanings of the rather stilted dialogue. In helping to coach
them in their parts I had the best of opportunities to know this. They
produced a resemblance to the sound of the sentences, and were
satisfied, though they missed the sense. Instead of saying that he
"divested" himself of his clothing, Mr. Box--or was it Cox?--said that
he "invested" himself, and no correction could cure him of saying that.
When one of them came to describing the lady's desperate wooing of him,
"to escape her importunities" is what he should have said; but what he
did say was "to escape our opportunities"--an error which the audience,
fortunately, failed to notice, for it slipped out again at the time of
performance, after having been repeatedly put right at rehearsal. And
this sort of thing happened all through the piece. Almost invariably the
points which depended on a turn of phrase were lost. "I at once give you
warning that I give you warning at once" became, "I at once give you
warning. That is, I give you warning at once." Cox (or Box) reading the
lawyer's letter, never made out the following passage: "I soon
discovered her will, the following extract from which will, I am sure,
give you satisfaction." It was plain that he thought the second word
"will" meant the same as the first.

As evidence of a lack of "book-learning" in the village, this might have
been insufficient, had it stood alone. But it did not. The misbehaviour
of the boys at the night-school has been mentioned. Being a member of
the school managing committee, I went in to the school occasionally, and
what I saw left me satisfied that a large part of the master's
difficulty arose from the unfamiliarity of the scholars with their own
language. That initial ignorance blocked the road to science even more
completely than, in the Entertainment Club, it did to art. "The Science
of Horticulture" was the subject of the lesson on one dismal evening,
this being the likeliest of some half-dozen "practical sciences"
prescribed for village choice by the educational authority at Whitehall.
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