fed and more entirely at leisure. Solomon was overseer of the roads at that time, and on his slow-paced cob often took his rounds by Frick to look at the workmen getting the stones there, pausing with a mysterious deliberation, which might have misled you into supposing that he had some other reason for staying than the mere want of impulse to move. After looking for a long while at any work that was going on, he would raise his eyes a little and look at the horizon; finally he would shake his bridle, touch his horse with the whip, and get it to move slowly onward. The hour-hand of a clock was quick by comparison with Mr Solomon, who had an agreeable sense that he could afford to be slow. He was in the habit of pausing for a cautious, vaguely-designing chat with every hedger or ditcher on his way, and was especially willing to listen even to news which he had heard before, feeling himself at an advantage over all narrators in partially disbelieving them. One day, however, he got into a dialogue with Hiram Ford, a waggoner, in which he himself contributed information. He wished to know whether Hiram had seen fellows with staves and instruments spying about: they called themselves railroad people, but there was no telling what they were, or what they meant to do. The least they pretended was that they were going to cut Lowick Parish into sixes and sevens.
“Why, there’ll be no stirrin’ from one pla-ace to another,” said Hiram, thinking of his waggon and horses.
“Not a bit,” said Mr Solomon. “And cutting up fine land such as this parish! Let ’em go into Tipton, say I. But there’s no knowing what there is at the bottom of it. Traffick is what they put for’ard; but it’s to do harm to the land and the poor man in the long-run.”
“Why, they’re Lunnon chaps, I reckon,” said Hiram, who had a dim notion of London as a centre of hostility to the country.
“Ay, to be sure. And in some parts against Brassing, by what I’ve heard say, the folks fell on ’em when they were spying, and broke their peep-holes as they carry, and drove ’em away, so as they knew better than come again.”
“It war good foon, I'd be bound,” said Hiram, whose fun was much restricted by circumstances.
“Well, I wouldn’t meddle with ’em myself,” said Solomon. “But some say this country’s seen its best days, and the sign is, as it's being overrun with these fellows trampling right and left, and wanting to cut it up into railways; and all for the big traffic to swallow up the little, so as there shan’t be a team left on the land, nor a whip to crack.”
“I’ll crack my whip about their ear’n, afore they bring it to that, though,” said Hiram, while Mr Solomon, shaking his bridle, moved onward.
Nettle-seed needs no digging. The ruin of this country-side by railroads was discussed, not only at the “Weights and Scales,” but in the hay-field, where the muster of working hands gave opportunities for talk such as were rarely had through the rural year.
