LIGHT LITERATURE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume I, Issue 5, 28 April 1880, Page 4

LIGHT LITERATURE.

LANCASHIRE VILLAGE MANNERS.

There is a quaint simplicity about the country people id Lancashire that wants a name in our vocabulary of .manners, as far removed from the vulgarity of the lower orders in the town on the one hand as fi'om the polished conventionalism of the higher classes on the other ; a simplicity that asserts itself because of its simplicity, and that never beard, and if it did never understood, "Who's Who." Imagine the surprise of the new vicar of the adjoining parish, fresh froui Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in all the dignity of the shovel-hat and garments of a rigidly clerical orthodoxy, accustomed to an agricultural population, that smoothed down its forelocks in deference to the vicar, but nevedreamed of bandying words witb him, — imagine him losing his way in one of his distant pavochial excursions, and inquiring in a dainty south-coun-try accent, from a lubberly boy weeding turnips in a field, —

" Pray, my boy, can you tell me the way to Bolton ?" " Ay," replied the boy, " yo' mun go across yon bleach croft and into th' loan, and yo'll get to Doffcocker, and then yore i' th' high road, andyo' can go straight on."

" Thank you," said the vicar ; " perhaps I can find it. And now, my boy, will you tell me what you do for a livelihood ?"

" I clear up up th' shippon, pills potatoes, or does oddm ; and, if I may be so bou'd, win yo' tell me what you do?"

" Oh, I am a minister of the Gospel ; I preach the Word of God."

" But what duu yo' do V persisted the boy. " I teach you the way of salvation ; I show you the road to heaven." " Nay, nay," said the lad ; " dunnot yo' pretend to teach me th' road to heaven, and doesn't know th' road to Bow'ton." — " Lancashire Memories," by Louisa Potter.