It is inevitable that men engaged day by day and year by year in such monotonous employ as agricultural labour should be somewhat lacking in acuteness and sensibility; in no class is the hereditary influence so marked.  Were it otherwise, matters would be in a sorry pass in country places, for discontent would reign supreme; and once let “ambition mock their useful toil,” once their sober wishes learn to stray, how would the necessary drudgery of agricultural work be accomplished at all?  In spite, however, of this marked characteristic of inertness—­hereditary in the first place, and fostered by the humdrum round of daily toil on the farm—­there is sometimes to be found a sense of humour and a love of merriment that is quite astonishing.  A good deal of what is called knowledge of the world, which one would have thought was only to be acquired in towns, nowadays penetrates into remote districts, so that country folk often have a good idea of “what’s what” I once overheard the following conversation: 

“Who’s your new master, Dick?  He’s a bart., ain’t he?”

“Oh no,” was the reply; “he’s only a jumped-up jubilee knight!”

Sense of humour of a kind the Cotswold labourer certainly has, even though he is quite unable to see a large number of apparently simple jokes.  The diverting history of John Gilpin, for instance, read at a smoking concert, was received with scarce a smile.

Old Mr. Peregrine lately told me an instance of the extraordinary secretiveness of the labourer.  Two of his men worked together in his barn day after day for several weeks.  During that time they never spoke to each other, save that one of them would always say the last thing at night, “Be sure to shut the door.”

Oddly enough they thoroughly appreciate the humour of the wonderful things that went on fifty and a hundred years ago.  The old farmer I have just mentioned told me that he remembers when he used to go to church fifty years ago, how, after they had all been waiting half an hour, the clerk would pin a notice in the porch, “No church to-day; Parson C——­ got the gout.”

As with history so also with geography, the Cotswold labourer sometimes gets “a bit mixed.”

“‘Ow be they a-gettin’ on in Durbysher?” lately enquired a man at Coln-St-Aldwyns.

To him replied a righteously indignant native of the same village, “I’ve ’eard as ’ow the English army ’ave killed ten thousand Durvishers (Dervishes).”

“Bedad!” answered his friend, “there won’t be many left in Durbysher if they goes on a-killin’ un much longer.”

Another story lately told me in the same village was as follows:—­

An old lady went to the stores to buy candles, and was astonished to find that owing to the Spanish-American war “candles was riz.”

“Get along!” she indignantly exclaimed. “Don’t tell me they fights by candlelight”