“The man,” he answered, “who sings loudly, clearly, and well, is a man in good health.  He is master of himself.  He is strict and well-managed.  When people hear him they say, ’Here is a prompt, ready, and serviceable man.  He is not afraid.  There is no rudeness in him.  He is urbane, swift, and to the point.  There is method in this fellow.’  All these things may be in the man who does not sing, but singing makes them apparent.  Therefore in our trade we sing.”

“But there must be some,” I said, “who do not sing and who yet are good tinners.”

At this he gave a little shrug of his shoulders and spread down his hands slightly but imperatively.  “There are such,” said he.  “They are even numerous.  But while they get less trade they are also less happy men.  For I would have you note (saving your respect and that of the company) that this singing has a quality.  It does good within as well as without.  It pleases the singer in his very self as well as brings him work and clients.”

Then I said, “You are right, and I wish to God I had something to tin; let me however tell you something in place of the trade I cannot offer you.  All things are trine, as you have heard” (here he nodded), “and your singing does, therefore, not a double but a triple good.  For it gives you pleasure within, it brings in trade and content from others, and it delights the world around you.  It is an admirable thing.”

When he heard this he was very pleased.  He took off his enormous hat, which was of straw and as big as a wheel, and said, “Sir, to the next meeting!” and went off singing with a happier and more triumphant note, “Carrots, onions, lentils, and beans, depend upon the tinner for their worth to mankind.”

ON “MAILS”

A “Mail” is a place set with trees in regular order so as to form alleys; sand and gravel are laid on the earth beneath the trees; masonry of great solidity, grey, and exquisitely worked, surrounds the whole except on one side, where strong stone pillars carry heavy chains across the entrance.  A “Mail” takes about two hundred years to mature, remains in perfection for about a hundred more, and then, for all I know, begins to go off.  But neither the exact moment at which it fails nor the length of its decline is yet fixed, for all “Mails” date from the seventeenth century at earliest, and the time when most were constructed was that of Charles II’s youth and Louis XIV’s maturity—­or am I wrong?  Were these two men not much of an age?

I am far from books; I am up in the Pyrenees.  Let me consider dates and reconstruct my formula.  I take it that Charles II was more than a boy when Worcester was fought and when he drank that glass of ale at Hotighton, at the “George and Dragon” there, and crept along tinder the Downs to Bramber and so to Shoreham, where he took ship and was free.  I take it, therefore, that when he came back in 1660 he must have been in the thirties, more or less, but how far in the thirties I dare not affirm.