One night Sir Condy was drinking with the excise-man and the gauger, and wagered that he could do it.  Says he, “Your hand is steadier than mine, Old Thady; fill you the horn for me.”  And so, wishing his honour success, I did.  He swallowed it down and dropped like one shot.  We put him to bed, and for five days the fever came and went, and came and went.  On the sixth he says, knowing me very well, “I’m in a burning pain all withinside of me, Thady.”  I could not speak.  “Brought to this by drink,” says he.  “Where are all the friends?  Gone, hey?  Ay, Sir Condy has been a fool all his days,” said he, and died.  He had but a very poor funeral, after all.

* * * * *

GEORGE ELIOT

Adam Bede

Mary Ann Evans ("George Eliot”) was born Nov. 22, 1819, at South Farm, Arbury, Warwickshire, England, where her father was agent on the Newdigate estate.  In her youth, she was adept at butter-making and similar rural work, but she found time to master Italian and German.  Her first important literary work was the translation of Strauss’s “Life of Jesus” in 1844, and shortly after her father’s death in 1849 she was writing in the “Westminster Review.”  It was not until 1856 that George Eliot settled down to the writing of novels.  “Scenes from Clerical Life” first appeared serially in “Blackwood’s Magazine” during 1857 and 1858; “Adam Bede,” the first and most popular of her long stories, in 1859.  In May, 1880, eighteen months after the death of her friend George Henry Lewes (see PHILOSOPHY, Vol.  XIV), George Eliot married Mr. J. W. Cross.  She died on December 22 in the same year.  With all her sense of humour there is a note of sadness in George Eliot’s novels.  She deals with ordinary, everyday people, and describes their joys and sorrows.  In “Adam Bede,” as in most of her work, the novelist drew from the ample stores of her early life in the Midlands, while the plot is unfolded with singular simplicity, purity, and power.

I.—­The Two Brothers

In the roomy workshop of Mr. Jonathan Burge, carpenter and builder, in the village of Hayslope, on the eighteenth of June, 1799, five workmen were busy upon doors and window-frames.

The tallest of the five was a large-boned, muscular man, nearly six feet high.  The sleeve rolled up above the elbow showed an arm that was likely to win the prize for feats of strength; yet the long, supple hand, with its broad finger tips, looked ready for works of skill.  In his tall stalwartness Adam Bede was a Saxon, and justified his name.  The face was large and roughly hewn, and when in repose had no other beauty than such as belongs to an expression of good-humoured, honest intelligence.

It is clear at a glance that the next workman is Adam’s brother.  He is nearly as tall; he has the same type of features.  But Seth’s broad shoulders have a slight stoop, and his glance, instead of being keen, is confiding and benignant.