148 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



dumb reflections, and not the least emphatic of these 

 have grown out of the everyday phenomena of mind 

 acting upon mind. You tell a man something, to- 

 day, or express an opinion, or assert a fact, about a 

 thing which he has perhaps never noticed, or never 

 heard, before; he smiles, starts, shakes his head, or 

 delivers himself in some other way, for the ways are 

 various in which men ' behave' (as the chemists call 

 it) under the infiltration of a new idea. Whatever 

 the mode may be, one thing you may be sure of, that 

 in the grunt, the smile, the laugh perhaps, in fact 

 whatever it may be that meets you, the attitude of 

 mind betokened is that of dissent. I am far from 

 complaining of it : some of my best hands have given 

 me infinitely the most mental gravelling in this re- 

 spect. But what I do complain of, and want to know 

 where to apply for remedy, (since the Law tells us that 

 for every Wrong there lies one) is that these same 

 hard-headed fellows, workmen, neighbours, friends, 

 kind advisers, or whatever other relation they may 

 hold, six, twelve, or eighteen months afterwards, 

 coolly come to me, and with all that air of profound 

 thought that becomes a man of reflective character, 

 down-calving as one may say with something intensely 

 wise, announce to me in language of their own, 



