A LEAVENING. 97 
association daring my Cornish visit, and upon 
whose characters and habits of life, Mr. Aitken's 
influence was telling perceptibly, telling upon rich 
and poor in a manner that made itself felt by 
every visitor in Penzance. 
The man who drove the donkey-chair, the 
miner who showed us short cuts over terrible 
precipices, alike had some tale to tell of wonderful 
conversions made with noise and clamour, in which 
it seemed to me, that the worse the " ground," the 
better the "seed sown " was supposed to thrive. 
What I heard did not seem to fit in with my 
knowledge of the usual workings of the Good 
Sower " in the natural world around me. I 
remembered the Lanceolatum dwindling away on 
the barren wall, and I asked what sort of lives 
followed upon these noisy conversions ? The 
answer was as I expected — a dwindling away 
afterwards. Yet not in all characters was tliis 
reaction to be observed. Upon some Mr. Aitken's 
strange power for influence fell with the highest 
results for good — stirring up the slothful, deepen- 
7 
