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On The Country
by
No, there is simply nothing to be done, and Satan has quite a difficulty to find enough work for all the idle hands. Some can be perfectly happy in spending all their time in solving the intricacies of those many wonderful puzzles which have appeared lately as a sort of antidote to the mischief generally supposed to be perpetrated by the aforesaid gentleman. Unfortunately, an entirely contrary effect is produced on me. They did not look far enough ahead when they made me. They could not conceive the wonderful minds of this time, and so did not endow me with a sufficient quantity of patience. If they could have imagined those marvelous little tin saucers, with shot running in and out of horse-shoes, etc., with me in the perspective, well, I think they would have gone about their work more carefully, and perhaps brought about a happier result. As it is, the puzzles are always swept away now at my approach. I have smashed so many.
It is base ingratitude, too, on my part, to bring them to so speedy an end; for what I owe to those dear little things I am powerless to express. Those entertaining people who sit speechless, and only answer yes and no with an eternal smile on their faces: give them a puzzle. There is no further effort to amuse them required on your part. They are at once absorbed in “shot.” Their only idea is to successfully get them into their places. They never do; but being good thorough-going characters will never give up the attempt.
You meet several of these people in the country, but they never get very friendly. You shock them too much with your “London manners.” They vote you “fast,” and turn aside, fearful of contamination for their daughters.
Oh, the dreariness, the heaviness of a country dinner party! It seems to last four times as long as any other–parish, horses, or crops the only topic of conversation. How can you be interested in old Jane Smith’s rheumatism when you have never heard of her before; in the swelling of a favorite mare’s hock, when you did not know it possessed such a thing. People’s views grow so dreadfully narrow, shut up in their small parish. Their stock of conversation is so very small. It is wise to find out your dinner partner at once, and avoid that man as you would a disease until the meal is announced. If not, if you accidentally get in his neighborhood, and he talks to you, all his conversation is at once exhausted, and you are obliged to hear it over again at table, or submit to an interesting silence.
Dinner parties anywhere are, I think, a mistake. It is a wicked waste of time to spend nearly three hours over eating and drinking. And you require such a very interesting “taker-in” to make it bearable at all.
The river is the nicest way of spending a holiday, in my opinion; you are so free and untrammeled. Mrs. Grundy even waives some of her laws on the river. The smaller the cottage, the more primitive the place, the more enjoyable it is. You can spend your time on the water, and when you are tired of that, you can hire a pony and trap and drive through some of the loveliest bits of English scenery, to your heart’s content.
Only be careful before engaging your pony to find out its previous occupations. It is a necessary caution, I assure you. It once took me nearly an hour to drive out of one of the smallest villages imaginable. And why? Because my pony had formerly belonged to the butcher, and insisted on first going his rounds! I coaxed, I persuaded, I lashed him, but it was all of no avail. On he trotted until he reached the familiar doors of his late customers, and then he stopped and would not go on for at least five minutes. One place was worse than any. I could not get him away for over a quarter-of-an-hour. This rather mystified me until I was told later that the butcher was on “walking out” terms with the cook residing there!