TALK WITH A FARMER. 75 



CHAPTER X. 



Talk with a Fanner ; with a tender-hearted Wheelright An Amusing 

 Story Notions of America Supper Speech of the English Pleas- 

 ant Tones Quaint Expressions The Twenty-ninth of May Zaccheus 

 in the Oak Tree Education Bed-chamber A Nightcap, and.... a 

 Nightcap. 



AN 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 fanner, the other a jack-of-all-trades, 

 but more distinctly of the wheelright's, and a worshiper of and 

 searcher after ideal women, a*s 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 thereabouts that 

 they could not afford to keep a minister, and only occasionally 

 had preaching. When he learned that we were from America, 

 he was anxious to know how church matters were there. Though 



