One village, Stagsden, had
attained to the dignity of a wind and a stringed instrument.
The elders of the church at Bedford belonged mostly to the middle
class in the town, but some of them were farmers. Ignorant they
were to a degree which would shock the most superficial young person
of the present day; and yet, if the farmer's ignorance and the
ignorance of the young person could be reduced to the same
denomination, I doubt whether it would not be found that the farmer
knew more than the other. The farmer could not discuss Coleridge's
metres or the validity of the maxim, "Art for Art's sake", but he
understood a good deal about the men around him, about his fields,
about the face of the sky, and he had found it out all by himself, a
fact of more importance than we suppose. He understood also that he
must be honest; he had learnt how to be honest, and everything about
him, house, clothes, was a reality and not a sham. One of these
elders I knew well. He was perfectly straightforward, God-fearing
also, and therefore wise. Yet he once said to my father, "I ain't
got no patience with men who talk potry (poetry) in the pulpit. If
you hear that, how can you wonder at your children wanting to go to
theatres and cathredrals?"
Of my father's family, beyond my grandfather, I know nothing.
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