Lancashire Sketches / Third Edition

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ppiness may be drawn out of little means, by wholesome minds. If the doors had been closed, I could have guessed at the condition of the interior by the clean door-step and windows, and by the healthy pot-flowers peeping prettily through the panes. Folk who can make such places beautiful by simple cleanliness and native taste, are the unlettered gentry of nature, more blest in their low estate than they can understand, when they compare it with the glitter of the fuming world in the distance. Like the lark's nest, though near

landscape with its departing splendour. I heard no stir inside, but knocking at the door, it was opened by a quiet middle-aged man, who asked me in. This was the schoolmaster himself; and, by the fireside sat a taller, older man; who was his brother. The only other inmate was a staid, elderly woman; whose dress, and mild countenance, was in perfect keeping with the order and peace of everything around. It was quite a sample of a quaint, comfortable English cottage interior. As I glanced about, I could fancy that many of the clean, little nick-nacks which I saw so carefully arranged, were the treasured heirlooms of old country housekeepers. Everything was in its right place, and cleaned up to its height. The house was as serene, and the demeanour of the people as seemly and subdued as if it had been a little chapel; and the setting sun streaming through the front window, filled the cottage with a melting glory, which no magnificence of wealth could imitate. Catching, unconsciously, the spirit of the hour, my voice crept down nearer to the delicate stillness of the scene; and I whispered my questions to the two brothers, as if to speak at all was a desecration of that contemplative silence which seemed to steep everything around, like a delicious slumber, filled with holy dreams. We gradually got into conversation, and in the course of our talk I gathered from the two brothers that they had lived and kept school in the house where Baines says that Tim Bobbin was born. They said that, though there was a general belief that he was born in that house, yet they did not themselves possess anything which clearly proved the fact. And yet it might be quite true, they said; for they had often known artists come out there to sketch the building as his birthplace. There were other people in the parish who, they thought, might perhaps know more about the matter. They

w connut piece things together neaw. If yo'd'n come'd fifty year sin, aw could ha' towd yo a tale, an' bowdly too,-aw could. But th' gam's up. The dule's getten th' porritch, an th' Lord's getten th' pon to scrape,-as usal." I was inquiring further about his friend "Owd Back," when he stopped me by saying, "Oh, there's Owd Hannah Wood; aw'd like to forgetten hur. Eh, that aw should forget Owd Hannah! Hoo lives by the hee-gate, as yo gwon to Stretford,-hoo does. What, are yo after property, or summat?" "No." "Whau then.... Yo mun see Owd Hannah soon, yung mon; or yo'n ha' to look for her i' Flixton graveyort; an' aw deawt that would sarve yo'r turn but little.... Folk donnut like so mich talk when they're getten theer.... My feyther an' mother's theer, an' o' th' owd set;-aw'st be amoon 'em in a bit. Well, well; neighbour fare's no ill fare, as th' sayin' is." In this way the old man wandered on till I rose to go; when, turning to the old woman sitting near, he said, "Aw've just unbethought mo. William-- will be the very mon to ax abeawt this Tim Bobbin; an' so will their Sam. They liv't i'th heawse 'at he's speykin' on; an' so did their on-setters (ancestors) afore 'em. Be