stubborn sinew, always truthful, straightforward, and genuine. Consider
what immense labour this represent! I do not think many such men can be
found, rude and unlettered, yet naturally gentleman-like, to work their
way in the world without the aid of the Lombard Street financiers; in
village life, remember, where all is stagnant and dull--no golden
openings such as occur near great towns. On work-days still wearing the
same old hat--I wonder what material it was originally?--tough leather
probably--its fibres soaked with mortar, its shine replaced by lime, its
shape dented by bricks, its rotundity flattened by timber, stuck about
with cow's hair--for a milker leans his head against the animal--sodden
with rain, and still the same old hat. The same old hat, that Teniers
might have introduced, a regular daub of a hat: pity it is that it will
never be painted. On Sundays the high silk hat, the glossy black coat of
the elder, but there are no gloves to be got on such hands as those; they
are too big and too real ever to be got into the artificiality of kid.
Everything grew under those hands; if there was a rabbit-hutch in the
back yard it became a shed, and a stable sprang up by the shed, and a
sawpit out of the stable, and a workshop beyond the sawpit, and cottages
to let beyond that; next a market garden and a brick-kiln, and a
hop-oast, and a few acres of freehold meadow, and by-and-by some villas;
all increasing and multiplying, and leading to enterprises in distant,
places--such a mighty generation after generation of solid things! A most
earnest and conscientious chapel man, welcoming the budding Paul and
Silas, steadily feeding the resident apostle, furnishing him with garden
produce and a side of bacon when the pig was killed, arranging a vicarage
for him at a next-to-nothing rent; lending him horse and trap, providing
innumerable bottles of three-star brandy for these men of God, and
continual pipes for the prophets; supplying the chapel fund with credit
in time of monetary difficulty--the very right arm and defender of the
faith.