the winding paths and rough places of his native tongue.  Notwithstanding I take no small encouragement from this, that whereas of those that have made to my knowledge the bravest boasting and the loudest puffing (though of this I am loth to speak, never having had a stomach for the work), the writings often perish neglectfully and nothing said, some, writing afar in quiet places removed from the busy rabblement of towns, not seldom steer their course to fame and riches, whereof, thanks be to Heaven, I never yet had covetousness, deeming theirs the happier lot to whom a dry crust with haply a slice of our good country cheese and a draught of the foaming cider bring contentment.  Each to his own fashion, say I, and the fashion of the TIDDLERS hath always been in a manner plain and unvarnished, like to the large oak press wherein mother stores her Sunday gown and other woman’s finery such as the mind of man, being at best but a coarse week-day creature, hath never fairly conceived.  But lo!  I am tarrying on my way, losing myself in a maze of cheap fancies, while the reader perchance yawns and stretches his limbs as though for bed.  All I know is paper and ink are cheaper than when I began to write.

CHAPTER II.

Now it fell on a Summer morning, I being then but newly come home from the Farmers’ College, in the ancient town of Cambridge, that our whole household was gathered together in our parlour.  Mother sat by the head of the great table, ladling out a savoury mess of porridge, not rashly, as the custom of some is, but carefully, like a prudent housewife, guarding her own.  And by her side sat MOLLY and BETTY, her daughters, and next to them the maids, and they that pertained to the work of the house.  First came old POLLY THISTLEDEW, gaunt of face, and parched of skin, the wrinkles running athwart her face, and over her hooked nose, like to the rivers drawn with much labour of meandering pen in the schoolboys’ maps, though for such my marks were always low, I being better skilled in the giving of raps with the closed fist than in the making of maps with inky fingers—­a bootless toil, as it always hath seemed to me.  Next to her sat SALLY, the little milkmaid, casting coy glances at mother, who would have none of them, but with undue sternness, as I thought then, and still think, tossed them back to the shame-faced SALLY.  Lower down sat JOHN TOOKER, “GIRT JAN DOUBLEFACE” he was ever called, not without a sly hint of increasing obesity, for JOHN, though a mighty man of thews and sinews, was no small trencherman, and, as the phrase is, did himself right royally whenever porridge was in question.  All these sat, peaceably swallowing, while I, at the table’s foot, faced mother, stirring my steaming bowl with my forefinger, forgetting the heat thereof, but not daring to wince, lest BETTY, whose tongue cut shrewdly when she had a mind, should make sport of me.

CHAPTER III.