Some who follow the narrative of his experience may
wonder at the midnight darkness of Mr. Dagley; but
nothing was easier in those times than for an hereditary
farmer of his grade to be ignorant, in spite somehow
of having a rector in the twin parish who was a gentleman
to the backbone, a curate nearer at hand who preached
more learnedly than the rector, a landlord who had
gone into everything, especially fine art and social
improvement, and all the lights of Middlemarch only
three miles off. As to the facility with which
mortals escape knowledge, try an average acquaintance
in the intellectual blaze of London, and consider
what that eligible person for a dinner-party would
have been if he had learned scant skill in “summing”
from the parish-clerk of Tipton, and read a chapter
in the Bible with immense difficulty, because such
names as Isaiah or Apollos remained unmanageable after
twice spelling. Poor Dagley read a few verses
sometimes on a Sunday evening, and the world was at
least not darker to him than it had been before.
Some things he knew thoroughly, namely, the slovenly
habits of farming, and the awkwardness of weather,
stock and crops, at Freeman’s End—
so called apparently by way of sarcasm, to imply that
a man was free to quit it if he chose, but that there
was no earthly “beyond” open to him.
CHAPTER XL.
Wise in his daily work was
he:
To fruits of diligence,
And not to faiths or polity,
He plied his utmost
sense.
These perfect in their little
parts,
Whose work is
all their prize—
Without them how could laws,
or arts,
Or towered cities
rise?
In watching effects, if only of an electric battery,
it is often necessary to change our place and examine
a particular mixture or group at some distance from
the point where the movement we are interested in
was set up. The group I am moving towards is
at Caleb Garth’s breakfast-table in the large
parlor where the maps and desk were: father,
mother, and five of the children. Mary was just
now at home waiting for a situation, while Christy,
the boy next to her, was getting cheap learning and
cheap fare in Scotland, having to his father’s
disappointment taken to books instead of that sacred
calling “business.”
The letters had come—nine costly letters,
for which the postman had been paid three and twopence,
and Mr. Garth was forgetting his tea and toast while
he read his letters and laid them open one above the
other, sometimes swaying his head slowly, sometimes
screwing up his mouth in inward debate, but not forgetting
to cut off a large red seal unbroken, which Letty
snatched up like an eager terrier.
The talk among the rest went on unrestrainedly, for
nothing disturbed Caleb’s absorption except
shaking the table when he was writing.
Two letters of the nine had been for Mary. After
reading them, she had passed them to her mother, and
sat playing with her tea-spoon absently, till with
a sudden recollection she returned to her sewing,
which she had kept on her lap during breakfast.
