Work for the cottager must be work to please him; and to
please him it must be the regular sort to which he is accustomed, which
he did beside his father as a boy, which _his_ father did, and _his_
father before him; the same old plough or grub-axe, the same milking, the
same identical mowing, if possible in the same field. He does not care
for any new-fangled jobs: he does not recognise them, they have no _locus
standi_--they are not established. Yet he is most anxious for work, and
works well, and is indeed the best labourer in the world. But it is the
national character. To understand a nation you must go to the cottager.
The well-to-do are educated, they have travelled, if not in their ideas,
they are more or less cosmopolitan. In the cottager the character stands
out in the coarsest relief; in the cottager you get to 'bed-rock,' as the
Americans say; there's the foundation. Character runs upwards, not
downwards. It is not the nature of the aristocrat that permeates the
cottager, but the nature of the cottager that permeates the aristocrat.
The best of us are polished cottagers. Scratch deep enough, and you come
to that; so that to know a people, go to the cottage, and not to the
mansion. The labouring man cannot quickly alter his ways. Can the
manufacturer? All alike try to go in the same old groove, till disaster
visits their persistence. It is English human nature.
APRIL GOSSIP
The old woman tried to let the cuckoo out of the basket at Heathfield
fair as usual on the 14th; but there seems to have been a hitch with the
lid, for he was not heard immediately about the country.
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