Here’s a book written by a friend o’ mine, and if yo’ll read it yo’ll see how wages find their own level, without either masters or men having aught to do with them; except the men cut their own throats wi’ striking, like the confounded noodles they are.”  Well, now, sir, I put it to yo’, being a parson, and having been in th’ preaching line, and having had to try and bring folk o’er to what yo’ thought was a right way o’ thinking—­did yo’ begin by calling ’em fools and such like, or didn’t yo’ rayther give ’em some kind words at first, to make ’em ready for to listen and be convinced, if they could; and in yo’r preaching, did yo’ stop every now and then, and say, half to them and half to yo’rsel’, “But yo’re such a pack o’ fools, that I’ve a strong notion it’s no use my trying to put sense into yo’?” I were not i’ th’ best state, I’ll own, for taking in what Hamper’s friend had to say—­I were so vexed at the way it were put to me;—­but I thought, “Come, I’ll see what these chaps has got to say, and try if it’s them or me as is th’ noodle.”  So I took th’ book and tugged at it; but, Lord bless yo’, it went on about capital and labour, and labour and capital, till it fair sent me off to sleep.  I ne’er could rightly fix i’ my mind which was which; and it spoke on ’em as if they was vartues or vices; and what I wanted for to know were the rights o’ men, whether they were rich or poor—­so be they only were men.’

‘But for all that,’ said Mr. Hale, ’and granting to the full the offensiveness, the folly, the unchristianness of Mr. Hamper’s way of speaking to you in recommending his friend’s book, yet if it told you what he said it did, that wages find their own level, and that the most successful strike can only force them up for a moment, to sink in far greater proportion afterwards, in consequence of that very strike, the book would have told you the truth.’

‘Well, sir,’ said Higgins, rather doggedly; ’it might, or it might not.  There’s two opinions go to settling that point.  But suppose it was truth double strong, it were no truth to me if I couldna take it in.  I daresay there’s truth in yon Latin book on your shelves; but it’s gibberish and not truth to me, unless I know the meaning o’ the words.  If yo’, sir, or any other knowledgable, patient man come to me, and says he’ll larn me what the words mean, and not blow me up if I’m a bit stupid, or forget how one thing hangs on another—­why, in time I may get to see the truth of it; or I may not.  I’ll not be bound to say I shall end in thinking the same as any man.  And I’m not one who think truth can be shaped out in words, all neat and clean, as th’ men at th’ foundry cut out sheet-iron.  Same bones won’t go down wi’ every one.  It’ll stick here i’ this man’s throat, and there i’ t’other’s.  Let alone that, when down, it may be too strong for this one, too weak for that.  Folk who sets up to doctor th’ world wi’ their truth, mun suit different for different minds; and be a bit tender in th’ way of giving it too, or th’ poor sick fools may spit it out i’ their faces.  Now Hamper first gi’es me a box on my ear, and then he throws his big bolus at me, and says he reckons it’ll do me no good, I’m such a fool, but there it is.’