If
any spark of wit slept in any Cowfoldian male or female, it appeared
then. No invitations to dinner were ever heard of; but tea was the
opportunity for hospitality, especially amongst women. The minister,
when he visited, invariably came to tea. The news circulated at tea,
and, in fact, at tea between five and six, Cowfold, if its intellect
could have been measured by a properly constructed gauge, would have
been found many degrees higher in the scale than at any other hour.
Granted that the conversation was personal, trivial, and even
scandalous, it was in a measure philosophical. Cowfold, though it
knew nothing, or next to nothing of abstractions, took immense
interest in the creatures in which they were embodied. It would have
turned a deaf ear to any debate on the nature of ethical obligation;
but it was very keen indeed in apportioning blame to its neighbours
who had sinned, and in deciding how far they had gone wrong. Cowfold
in other words believed that flesh and blood, and not ideas, are the
school and the religion for most of us, and that we learn a language
by the examples rather than by the rules. The young scholar fresh
from his study is impatient at what he considers the unprofitable
gossip about the people round the corner; but when he gets older he
sees that often it is much better than his books, and that
distinctions are expressed by a washerwoman, if the objects to be
distinguished eat and drink and sleep, which he would find it
difficult to make with his symbols.
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