Tom Browns School Days | Page 9

mwoast; While vools gwoes prating vur and nigh,
We stwops at whum, my dog and I."
Here, at any rate, lived and stopped at home Squire Brown, J.P. for the
county of Berks, in a village near the foot of the White Horse range.
And here he dealt out justice and mercy in a rough way, and begat sons
and daughters, and hunted the fox, and grumbled at the badness of the
roads and the times. And his wife dealt out stockings, and calico shirts,
and smock frocks, and comforting drinks to the old folks with the
"rheumatiz," and good counsel to all; and kept the coal and clothes'
clubs going, for yule-tide, when the bands of mummers came round,
dressed out in ribbons and coloured paper caps, and stamped round the
Squire's kitchen, repeating in true sing-song vernacular the legend of St.
George and his fight, and the ten-pound doctor, who plays his part at
healing the Saint--a relic, I believe, of the old Middle-age mysteries. It
was the first dramatic representation which greeted the eyes of little
Tom, who was brought down into the kitchen by his nurse to witness it,
at the mature age of three years. Tom was the eldest child of his parents,
and from his earliest babyhood exhibited the family characteristics in
great strength. He was a hearty, strong boy from the first, given to
fighting with and escaping from his nurse, and fraternizing with all the
village boys, with whom he made expeditions all round the
neighbourhood. And here, in the quiet old-fashioned country village,
under the shadow of the everlasting hills, Tom Brown was reared, and
never left it till he went first to school, when nearly eight years of age,
for in those days change of air twice a year was not thought absolutely
necessary for the health of all her Majesty's lieges.
I have been credibly informed, and am inclined to believe, that the
various boards of directors of railway companies, those gigantic
jobbers and bribers, while quarrelling about everything else, agreed
together some ten years back to buy up the learned profession of
medicine, body and soul. To this end they set apart several millions of
money, which they continually distribute judiciously among the doctors,
stipulating only this one thing, that they shall prescribe change of air to
every patient who can pay, or borrow money to pay, a railway fare, and

see their prescription carried out. If it be not for this, why is it that none
of us can be well at home for a year together? It wasn't so twenty years
ago, not a bit of it. The Browns didn't go out of the country once in five
years. A visit to Reading or Abingdon twice a year, at assizes or quarter
sessions, which the Squire made on his horse with a pair of saddle-bags
containing his wardrobe, a stay of a day or two at some country
neighbour's, or an expedition to a county ball or the yeomanry review,
made up the sum of the Brown locomotion in most years. A stray
Brown from some distant county dropped in every now and then; or
from Oxford, on grave nag, an old don, contemporary of the Squire;
and were looked upon by the Brown household and the villagers with
the same sort of feeling with which we now regard a man who has
crossed the Rocky Mountains, or launched a boat on the Great Lake in
Central Africa. The White Horse Vale, remember, was traversed by no
great road-- nothing but country parish roads, and these very bad. Only
one coach ran there, and this one only from Wantage to London, so that
the western part of the Vale was without regular means of moving on,
and certainly didn't seem to want them. There was the canal, by the
way, which supplied the country-side with coal, and up and down
which continually went the long barges, with the big black men
lounging by the side of the horses along the towing-path, and the
women in bright-coloured handkerchiefs standing in the sterns steering.
Standing I say, but you could never see whether they were standing or
sitting, all but their heads and shoulders being out of sight in the cozy
little cabins which occupied some eight feet of the stern, and which
Tom Brown pictured to himself as the most desirable of residences. His
nurse told him that those good-natured-looking women were in the
constant habit of enticing children into the barges, and taking them up
to London and selling them, which Tom wouldn't believe, and which
made him resolve as soon as possible to accept the oft-proffered
invitation of these sirens to "young master" to come in and have a ride.
But as yet the nurse was