Mushroom Town

memory serves, Mr. Wesley gave these assemblies for prayer and mutual consolation the latter name as far north in Wales as Builth-but then Mr. Wesley did not speak

t, familiar with the great ones of the land, yet by their favour. For that

ow, a frockcoat with voluminous lapels of watered silk, grey trousers, and new black kid gloves. He drove from Porth Neigr in the carriage that had been lent him by a political supporter, and alighted at the gap opposite John Pritc

ed John Pritchard by the hand, and then, not content with that, patted him all up the arm as far as the shoulder and across the breast with the other hand, as if he conferred

ys ago to the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs-but dear me, here am I neglecting the ladies-I tell you presently-How are you, Mrs. Gruffydd? This young man is never Eesaac Oliver! Aw-w-w, how

hwrf yn

yn dydd

om England and the Englishman'-and indeed you do not.-Here comes Howell Gruffydd, run-ning (indeed he runs like a deer, Mrs. Gruffydd!).-Now, Howell Gruffydd, you miss the train if you don't look sharp (he's making so much money he cannot leave the sho

others following a yard or two behind. Mr. Tudor Williams advanced to ancient Mrs. Prit

I could take bagsfull of this air back with me I make my for-tune!-Now, Miss Pritchard, I think I must have offended you, you are so long in spik-king to me! And how is all in school? I tell you press-ently something straight from the Board of Ed-u-ca-tion for you to try. You whisper a subject in the scholar's ear as he comes in at the door,

ockets on the walls, and the sound of his moving about and pouring out water and spluttering as

respectfully yet proprietorially watching him eat and drink his tea, "now tell

ther matters, look at the company t

obstinate, dull, just, unsmiling; as ready for the Day of Judgment as if it had been the audit-day of the accounts he kept as principal trustee of the Baptist Chapel. For all that he was so rooted in Llanyglo that he had never travelled farther than

brought in money, whether he did a man's labour or washed up the dishes or black-leaded the grate. He could not read, but if at Porth Neigr a stranger chanced to ask him the way, he would smile and reply, "There is the signpost," allowing it to be understood that his questioner might read as well as he himself. Howell had his inner dream. It was of a shop with two large windows, and a bell

hem the more on that account. He himself would not have killed one of the blue and primrose butterflies that in the summer hovered over the Llanyglo buffets of wild thyme, and he could not understand a country that said it was fond of animals and yet, like these Lancashire men, hunted rats with terriers and coursed hares with dogs. Alone of that nation he had for a time loved delicate little Minetta Garden, and had told her stories of fairie

would be a good thing for Nancy, for otherwise there was none in Llanyglo to marry her, and to domestic service elsewhere she could not have stooped. She was tall and plump and ruddy, with black hair and black-lashed blue eyes, and in her conversation she gave the preference to the longer word

low with tears of sensibility while the other was glued to the main chance; Baptist, nationalist, and arguer by metaphor and analogy; an elocutionist, and a maker of elocutionists by that process of education that consists of giving a scholar a subject and bi

p his hand, refu

e spent in this room! 'Mid Pleas-sures and Palaces'-indeed there is tears in my eyes when I see the dres-ser with the plates on it, and the jugs, and Mrs. Prit-chard's Bible in th

so far from it but that he could see Ned Kerr and his brother Sam setting a rough window-sash into position, was once more shaking

al to injure men who had risked their lives with him having given that exploit itself a kind of condonation, it seemed as if their Member had merely come to a Sasiwn after all. But land had changed hands: they had a vague sense

y yet absent-mindedly patting big John Pritchard's back as h

e had appeared to them in

over any oth

ate reasons, for knowing that this very land might soon be more than merely worth acquiring.... He was not deceiving them. It pleased them to think that their Member was the repository of weighty secrets, and he was merely indulging this simple and legitimate liking. But already he intended to

on whose land is it e

ace when they told hi

nd antiquities, and suchlike foolishness, when there is great work wait-ing to be

Pritchard inte

g 'Thomas, make Room for your Uncle

to gain a little time; he had no wish to call upon Squire Wynne, eithe

y did," said

emedy. In my opinion our friend Dafydd here--" he put his arm affectionately a

(By the way, had the case been altered, it is doubtfu

ld the man who wanted information for noth-t

Pritchard. "If one comes others may come, and indeed

ter, while, before their eyes, th

se two things is his void and vulnerable place. He has not set up for himself the Englishman's stiff and serviceable and systematised falsity of Compromise, that has no justification save that it works. He has his age-long tradition, but no daily rule that can (and indeed must) be applied without question. Each of his acts is his first act, and so a retail act. Because his hypocrisy lacks the magnificent scope of tha

country Squire, whose views on the Land Question are ob-solete in tot-to. But if he harbours men

hey were so obsolete that he had sold when (as first Edward Garden had known, and now Mr. Tudor Williams, M.P., knew) he ought to have held; and i