“They want elevating and refining in some way, and you can only do it with brutes through their affections.”

His manner with poor people was very good—­direct, asking straightforward questions and not making his opinions palatable, and yet behaving to them with perfect courtesy, as to equals.

We were staying in a house together in the country once, and heard that a certain farmer was in trouble of some kind—­we were not exactly told what.

Arthur had struck up a friendship with this man on a previous visit, and so he determined to go over and see him.  He asked me to ride with him, and I agreed.  I will describe the episode precisely as I can remember it: 

We rode along, talking of various things, over the fresh Sussex downs, and at last turned into a lane, overhung on both sides with twisted tree-roots of fantastic shape, writhing and sprawling out of the crumbling bank of yellow sand.  Presently we came to a gap in the bank, and found we were close to the farm.  It lay down to the right, in a little hollow, and was approached by a short drive inclosed by stone walls overgrown by stonecrop and pennywort, and fringed with daffodils and snap-dragons:  to the left, the wall was overtopped by the elders of a copse; to the right, it formed one side of a fruit garden.

The drive ended in a flagged yard, upon which our horse’s hoofs made a sudden clatter, scaring a dozen ducks into pools and other coigns of vantage, and rousing the house-dog, who, with ringing chain and surly grumbles, came out blinking, to indulge in several painful barks, waiting, as dogs will, with eyes shut and nose strained in the air, for the effect of each bark, and consciously enjoying the tuneful echo.  A stern-featured, middle-aged woman came out quickly, almost as if annoyed at the interruption, but on seeing who it was she dropped a quick courtsey, and spoke sharply to the dog.

Arthur went forward, holding out his hand.

“We were so sorry to hear at the house,” he said, “that there was trouble here.  I did not learn quite clearly what it was, but I thought I would ride over to see if there was anything I could do.”

Arthur knew quite enough of the poor to be sure that it was always best to plunge straight into the subject in hand, be it never so grim or painful.  Life has no veneering for them; they look hard realities in the face and meet them as they can.  They are the true philosophers, and their straightforwardness about grief and disease is not callousness; it is directness, and generally means as much, if not more, feeling than the hysterical wailings of more cultivated emotion, more organized nerves.

“Yes, sir,” she said to me, with that strange dignity of language that trouble gives to the poor, just raising her apron to her eyes, “it’s my master, sir—­Mr. Keighley, sir.  The doctor has given him up, and he’s only waiting to die.  It don’t give him much pain, his complaint; and it leaves his head terrible clear.  But he’s fearful afraid to die, sir; and that’s where it is.