his father’s death.  When the official asked the date of the event, the son replied, “He ain’t dead yet, but he’ll be dead before night, so I thought it would save me another journey if you would put it down now.”  “Oh, that won’t do at all,” said the registrar, “perhaps your father will live till to-morrow.”  “Well, I don’t know, sir; the doctor says as he won’t, and he knows what he has given him.”

The accomplished authoress of Country Conversations has put on record some delightful specimens of rural dialogue, culled chiefly from the labouring classes of Cheshire.  And, rising in the social scale from the labourer to the farmer, what could be more lifelike than this tale of an ill-starred wooing?  “My son Tom has met with a disappointment about getting married.  You know he’s got that nice farm at H——­; so he met a young lady at a dance, and he was very much took up, and she seemed quite agreeable.  So, as he heard she had Five Hundred, he wrote next day to pursue the acquaintance, and her father wrote and asked Tom to come over to S——.  Eh, dear!  Poor fellow!  He went off in such sperrits, and he looked so spruce in his best clothes, with a new tie and all.  So next day, when I heard him come to the gate, I ran out as pleased as could be; but I see in a moment he was sadly cast down.  ‘Why, Tom, my lad,’ says I, ‘what is it?’ ‘Why, mother,’ says he, ’she’d understood mine was a harable; and she will not marry to a dairy.’”

From Cheshire to East Anglia is a far cry, but let me give one more lesson in the Art of Putting Things, derived from that delightful writer Dr. Jessopp.  In one of his studies of rural life the Doctor tells, in his own inimitable style, a story of which the moral is the necessity of using plain words when you are preaching to the poor.  The story runs that in the parish where he served his first curacy there was an old farmer on whom had fallen all the troubles of Job—­loss of stock, loss of capital, eviction from his holding, the death of his wife, and the failure of his own health.  The well-meaning young curate, though full of compassion, could find no more novel topic of consolation than to say that all these trials were the dispensations of Providence.  On this the poor old victim brightened up and said with a cheerful smile, “Ah yes, sir; I know that right enough.  That old Providence has been against me all along; but I reckon there’s One above that will put a stopper on him if he goes too far.”  Evidently, as Dr. Jessopp observes, “Providence” was to the good old man a learned synonym for the devil.

XXXI.

CHILDREN.

The humours of childhood include in rich abundance both Things which would have been better left unsaid, and Things which might have been expressed differently.  But just now they lack their sacred bard.  There is no one to observe and chronicle them.  It is a pity, for the “heart that watches and receives” will often find in the pleasantries of childhood a good deal that deserves perpetuation.