Englishman. "Can you this?" says we, sparrin' up to him. "Pretty
middlin'," says he, "and does it well." "Well then," says we, "then
you're one of us, and we'll beat the world"; and did so.'

John Thresher had a laborious mind; it cost him beads on his forehead to
mount to these heights of meditation. He told me once that he thought
one's country was like one's wife: you were born in the first, and
married to the second, and had to learn all about them afterwards, ay,
and make the best of them. He recommended me to mix, strain, and throw
away the sediment, for that was the trick o' brewery. Every puzzle that
beset him in life resolved to this cheerful precept, the value of which,
he said, was shown by clear brown ale, the drink of the land. Even as a
child I felt that he was peculiarly an Englishman. Tales of injustice
done on the Niger river would flush him in a heat of wrath till he cried
out for fresh taxes to chastise the villains. Yet at the sight of the
beggars at his gates he groaned at the taxes existing, and enjoined me
to have pity on the poor taxpayer when I lent a hand to patch the laws.
I promised him I would unreservedly, with a laugh, but with a sincere
intention to legislate in a direct manner on his behalf. He, too, though
he laughed, thanked me kindly.

I was clad in black for my distant mother. Mrs. Waddy brought down a
young man from London to measure me, so that my mourning attire might be
in the perfect cut of fashion. 'The child's papa would strip him if he
saw him in a country tailor's funeral suit,' she said, and seemed to blow
a wind of changes on me that made me sure my father had begun to stir up
his part of the world. He sent me a prayer in his own handwriting to say
for my mother in heaven. I saw it flying up between black edges whenever
I shut my eyes. Martha Thresher dosed me for liver. Mrs. Waddy found me
pale by the fireside, and prescribed iron. Both agreed upon high-