Far From the Madding Crowd | Page 2

be entirely unknown to the rising generation of schoolboys
there. The practice of divination by Bible and key, the regarding of
valentines as things of serious import, the shearing-supper, and the
harvest-home, have, too, nearly disappeared in the wake of the old
houses; and with them have gone, it is said, much of that love of
fuddling to which the village at one time was notoriously prone. The
change at the root of this has been the recent supplanting of the class of
stationary cottagers, who carried on the local traditions and humours,
by a population of more or less migratory labourers, which has led to a
break of continuity in local history, more fatal than any other thing to
the preservation of legend, folk-lore, close inter-social relations, and

eccentric individualities. For these the indispensable conditions of
existence are attachment to the soil of one particular spot by generation
after generation.
T.H.
February 1895


CHAPTER I
DESCRIPTION OF FARMER OAK -- AN INCIDENT
WHEN Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they
were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced
to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon
his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun.
His Christian name was Gabriel, and on working days he was a young
man of sound judgment, easy motions, proper dress, and general good
character. On Sundays he was a man of misty views, rather given to
postponing, and hampered by his best clothes and umbrella: upon the
whole, one who felt himself to occupy morally that vast middle space
of Laodicean neutrality which lay between the Communion people of
the parish and the drunken section, -- that is, he went to church, but
yawned privately by the time the congregation reached the Nicene
creed, and thought of what there would be for dinner when he meant to
be listening to the sermon. Or, to state his character as it stood in the
scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in tantrums,
he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased, he was
rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whose moral
colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture.
Since he lived six times as many working-days as Sundays, Oak's
appearance in his old clothes was most peculiarly his own -- the mental
picture formed by his neighbours in imagining him being always
dressed in that way. He wore a low-crowned felt hat, spread out at the
base by tight jamming upon the head for security in high winds, and a

coat like Dr. Johnson's; his lower extremities being encased in ordinary
leather leggings and boots emphatically large, affording to each foot a
roomy apartment so constructed that any wearer might stand in a river
all day long and know nothing of damp -- their maker being a
conscientious man who endeavoured to compensate for any weakness
in his cut by unstinted dimension and solidity.
Mr. Oak carried about him, by way of watch, what may be called a
small silver clock; in other words, it was a watch as to shape and
intention, and a small clock as to size. This instrument being several
years older than Oak's grandfather, had the peculiarity of going either
too fast or not at all. The smaller of its hands, too, occasionally slipped
round on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes were told with
precision, nobody could be quite certain of the hour they belonged to.
The stopping peculiarity of his watch Oak remedied by thumps and
shakes, and he escaped any evil consequences from the other two
defects by constant comparisons with and observations of the sun and
stars, and by pressing his face close to the glass of his neighbours'
windows, till he could discern the hour marked by the green- faced
timekeepers within. It may be mentioned that Oak's fob being difficult
of access, by reason of its somewhat high situation in the waistband of
his trousers (which also lay at a remote height under his waistcoat), the
watch was as a necessity pulled out by throwing the body to one side,
compressing the mouth and face to a mere mass of ruddy flesh on
account of the exertion required, and drawing up the watch by its chain,
like a bucket from a well.
But some thoughtful persons, who had seen him walking across one of
his fields on a certain December morning -- sunny and exceedingly
mild -- might have regarded Gabriel Oak in other aspects than these. In
his face one might notice that many of the hues and curves of youth had
tarried on to manhood: there even remained in his remoter crannies
some relics of