92 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER X. 



TALK WITH A FARMER; WITH A TENDER-HEARTED WHEELWRIGHT rAN 



AMUSING STORY. NOTIONS OF AMERICA. SUPPER. SPEECH OF THE EN 

 GLISH. PLEASANT TONES. QUAINT EXPRESSIONS. THE TWENTY-NINTH OF 



MAY. ZACCHEUS IN THE OAK TREE. EDUCATION. BED-CHAMBER. A 



NIGHTCAP AND A NIGHTCAP. 



one side near the fire there was a recess in the wall, in 

 which was a settle (a long, high-backed, wooden seat). 

 Two men with pipes and beer sat in it, with whom we fell to 

 talking. One of them proved to be a farmer, the other a 

 jack-of-all-trades, but more distinctly of the wheelwright s, 

 and a worshipper of and searcher after ideal women, as he 

 more than once intimated to us. We were again told by the 

 farmer that free trade was ruining the country no farmer 

 could live long in it. He spoke with a bitter jocoseness of 

 the regularity of his taxes, and said that though they played 

 the devil with every thing else, he always knew how tithes 

 would be. He paid, I think he said, about a dollar an acre 

 every year to the church, though he never went to it in his 

 life ; always went to chapel, as his father did before him. He 

 was an Independent ; but there were so few of them there 

 abouts that they could not afford to keep a minister, and onlv 

 occasionally had preaching. When he learned that we were 

 from America, he was anxious to know how church matters 

 were there. Though a rather intelligent man, he was utterly 

 ignorant that we had no state church; and though a dis 



