Three generations

148 BREAD-WINNER AND HOUSE-MOTHER
superiority with even the best veneer of culture and
refinement. He learned to appreciate strong common
sense and keen humour wherever he found them — nay,
to take a positive delight in the quaint simplicity, the
unvarnished raciness, the comic grotesqueness with
which thoughts worth weighing, and words which
deserved a hearing, were often spoken.
There was an institution in the village called by its
representatives in different ranks the " Town Council,"
which my father loved to attend. The meeting was
held weekly each Saturday night in a room in the
house of a highly respectable boot and shoemaker — a
modest man who felt honoured by the company which
gathered round him. Chief among them was a wealthy
retired candlemaker, well connected among the old
natives of the village ; but it was for his mental quali-
ties that he took the lead in the little assembly. He
was caustic and sarcastic to a degree, while just and
kindly withal. There was a portly, well-to-do wood-
merchant and cabinet - maker, and his quiet and
" pawkie " son. There might be an occupant or two
of the villas beginning to be built on the outskirts of
the village when the gentlemen's wit and wisdom
were sufficient to outweigh their sensitive gentility.
There was now and then a skipper of the salt sea and
foreign parts. The whole affairs of the nation, the
local events of any consequence, were freely and fully
discussed by the councillors. My father used to take
all men visitors with him to the Council to enjoy the
pithy version of the day's news and the village gossip.
Another and more deeply valued evidence of the
honest regard which had been growing up during the
score of years between the latest comer and the old
residents in the district who had come to know and