At first he lived up above entirely, reading a good deal, and strumming upon an old harp which he had bought at a sale, saying when in a bitter humour that he might have to get his living by it in the streets some day.  But he soon preferred to read human nature by taking his meals downstairs in the general dining-kitchen, with the dairyman and his wife, and the maids and men, who all together formed a lively assembly; for though but few milking hands slept in the house, several joined the family at meals.  The longer Clare resided here the less objection had he to his company, and the more did he like to share quarters with them in common.

Much to his surprise he took, indeed, a real delight in their companionship.  The conventional farm-folk of his imagination—­ personified in the newspaper-press by the pitiable dummy known as Hodge—­were obliterated after a few days’ residence.  At close quarters no Hodge was to be seen.  At first, it is true, when Clare’s intelligence was fresh from a contrasting society, these friends with whom he now hobnobbed seemed a little strange.  Sitting down as a level member of the dairyman’s household seemed at the outset an undignified proceeding.  The ideas, the modes, the surroundings, appeared retrogressive and unmeaning.  But with living on there, day after day, the acute sojourner became conscious of a new aspect in the spectacle.  Without any objective change whatever, variety had taken the place of monotonousness.  His host and his host’s household, his men and his maids, as they became intimately known to Clare, began to differentiate themselves as in a chemical process.  The thought of Pascal’s was brought home to him:  “A mesure qu’on a plus d’esprit, on trouve qu’il y a plus d’hommes originaux.  Les gens du commun ne trouvent pas de difference entre les hommes.” The typical and unvarying Hodge ceased to exist.  He had been disintegrated into a number of varied fellow-creatures—­beings of many minds, beings infinite in difference; some happy, many serene, a few depressed, one here and there bright even to genius, some stupid, others wanton, others austere; some mutely Miltonic, some potentially Cromwellian—­into men who had private views of each other, as he had of his friends; who could applaud or condemn each other, amuse or sadden themselves by the contemplation of each other’s foibles or vices; men every one of whom walked in his own individual way the road to dusty death.

Unexpectedly he began to like the outdoor life for its own sake, and for what it brought, apart from its bearing on his own proposed career.  Considering his position he became wonderfully free from the chronic melancholy which is taking hold of the civilized races with the decline of belief in a beneficent Power.  For the first time of late years he could read as his musings inclined him, without any eye to cramming for a profession, since the few farming handbooks which he deemed it desirable to master occupied him but little time.