I don’t think much of you yet—­I wish I could—­though you do go talking and lecturing up and down the country to crowded audiences, and are busy with all sorts of philanthropic intellectualism, and circulating libraries and museums, and Heaven only knows what besides, and try to make us think, through newspaper reports, that you are, even as we, of the working classes.  But bless your hearts, we “ain’t so green,” though lots of us of all sorts toady you enough certainly, and try to make you think so.

I’ll tell you what to do now:  instead of all this trumpeting and fuss, which is only the old parliamentary-majority dodge over again, just you go, each of you (you’ve plenty of time for it, if you’ll only give up t’other line), and quietly make three or four friends—­real friends—­among us.  You’ll find a little trouble in getting at the right sort, because such birds don’t come lightly to your lure; but found they may be.  Take, say, two out of the professions, lawyer, parson, doctor—­which you will; one out of trade; and three or four out of the working classes—­tailors, engineers, carpenters, engravers.  There’s plenty of choice.  Let them be men of your own ages, mind, and ask them to your homes; introduce them to your wives and sisters, and get introduced to theirs; give them good dinners, and talk to them about what is really at the bottom of your hearts; and box, and run, and row with them, when you have a chance.  Do all this honestly as man to man, and by the time you come to ride old John, you’ll be able to do something more than sit on his back, and may feel his mouth with some stronger bridle than a red-tape one.

Ah, if you only would!  But you have got too far out of the right rut, I fear.  Too much over-civilization, and the deceitfulness of riches.  It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.  More’s the pity.  I never came across but two of you who could value a man wholly and solely for what was in him—­who thought themselves verily and indeed of the same flesh and blood as John Jones the attorney’s clerk, and Bill Smith the costermonger, and could act as if they thought so.

CHAPTER III—­SUNDRY WARS AND ALLIANCES.

Poor old Benjy!  The “rheumatiz” has much to answer for all through English country-sides, but it never played a scurvier trick than in laying thee by the heels, when thou wast yet in a green old age.  The enemy, which had long been carrying on a sort of border warfare, and trying his strength against Benjy’s on the battlefield of his hands and legs, now, mustering all his forces, began laying siege to the citadel, and overrunning the whole country.  Benjy was seized in the back and loins; and though he made strong and brave fight, it was soon clear enough that all which could be beaten of poor old Benjy would have to give in before long.

It was as much as he could do now, with the help of his big stick and frequent stops, to hobble down to the canal with Master Tom, and bait his hook for him, and sit and watch his angling, telling him quaint old country stories; and when Tom had no sport, and detecting a rat some hundred yards or so off along the bank, would rush off with Toby the turnspit terrier, his other faithful companion, in bootless pursuit, he might have tumbled in and been drowned twenty times over before Benjy could have got near him.