82 OLD-FASHIONED GARDENING 



a fustian maker; which means that he was a maker 

 of cotton cloth — ^probably, in other words, a weaver. 

 And there were wool carders, silk makers, printers, 

 brewers' men, a hatter and so on, among those who 

 set out from Holland some fourteen years later. 



Some of these trades may have been acquired dur-i 

 ing the eleven years that the congregation abode in 

 Holland, to be sure; but the men who, even in exile, 

 took up trades, were not scholars nor men of high posi- 

 tion; that is certain. They were the simple rustics of 

 a little English village, most of them, no doubt, tillers 

 of the soil, all of them strangers to the finer arts and 

 graces of living. That there were a few of gentle 

 breeding may not with certainty be denied; but even 

 this is open to some question. All were refined, how- 

 ever, by the common fire of high resolve which burned 

 in every breast, and by the strict introspection and 

 discipline to which they constantly subjected them- 

 selves, for conscience's sake. And much reading of 

 their Bibles, with little reading of anything else, de- 

 veloped a dignity and certain nobleness of manner, 

 even in the rudest. 



But in the very nature of the rigid bands which 

 bound them so close, one to another, lay the spirit 

 which abjured beauty and grace, even were the con- 

 ception of beauty and grace inherently possible in the 

 minds of such people. With strange ideas of a bar- 



