112 ASHGILL; OR, THE LIFE 



It has been remarked before that " Mr. John " is a, 

 man of heredity and environment. A lover of old times, 

 old manners, and even old clothes, his belief was created 

 by his father's simple mode of dress and independent 

 disregard for the conventionalities of costume. 



" It was my father's custom, 

 And so it shall be mine," 



is the text from which he preaches his daily pilgrimage, 

 His observance of religious duties was drilled into him 

 by his mother, of whom it is said that she was first astir 

 in the mornings, like the douce guid wife that she was, 

 and last up at night doing the house turns. Nor did 

 her industry cease here, for when the horses were out 

 at exercise on the Moor and all the stable lads occupied,, 

 she would take the broom and sweep the boxes clean, 

 for the animals to have sweet stabling on their return 

 from the early morning gallops. With sometimes as: 

 many as between forty and fifty lads at Ashgill, it goes 

 without saying there would be some wild, unruly spirits 

 amongst them. Their moral and spiritual welfare was 

 this real worker's concern. It was her rule, supple- 

 mented by the will of her husband, to enforce the 

 attendance of the lads at divine service to get a mouthful 

 of salvation. Refractory ones there would be amongst 

 them as little in love with dry-as-dust sermons as 

 spiritual welfare. Mrs. Osborne would occasionally find 

 some of them skulking from church. Seizing the first 

 broom she could lay hands on, she would thump the 

 backsliders right and left, and like a feminine John 

 Knox not knocks, if you please drive them down 

 the lane till they were within the portals of the sacred 

 edifice. 



Another writer in the period with which we are now 



