"A'n't There No P'r'aps?"
AN old laborer is leaning on a gate in the quiet evening, on the way home from his day's work. Presently the trot, trot of a horse breaks in upon the stillness, muffled in the distance, but drawing nearer, and loud now on the hard, dry road. It is the farmer coming home from the monthly sale at the small town three miles away, and he draws rein, seeing the old man leaning on the gate. He is disposed for a chat, at least he is pleased to have some one to whom to tell the thoughts that have been busying his mind during his ride; and the old man is somewhat of a favorite with him—he bears the character (alas! a rare one) of being thoroughly reliable. And the evening is still, and the day's work is done; and there is no one awaiting the farmer at home. In the autumn, he talks of getting himself a companion, a helpmeet for him. But he must have things a bit straight first, and look about him on the land. Meanwhile he is full of plans and schemes, and he is minded to please himself tonight by unrolling some of the panorama of them before the eyes of the old peasant. "Fine night, my man!" This, of course, commences every British conversation; and the prospects of the weather must now, as always, receive their due meed of first place in the talk. Then they go on to talk about the crops and the likelihood of the year, about the farming in the country that the farmer had come from, and the great superiority of the ways there. Great alterations were to be made, and the productiveness of the land was to be doubled. "You see the rushes in this pasture-land, my man? Well, all that will have to be drained. There is a capital fall, and there is no reason why two blades of grass should not grow where one is growing now. I shall alter all this, you'll see. You'll hardly know the place when I've been here a year or two. As for the plough-land, I suppose you never saw a steam-plough hereabouts. So you go on, ploughing the same ground over and over again, turning up just the same depth. And the tramp of men and horses upon the land, year after year, makes it as hard as a road two feet under the soil. Then, of course, you can't have the proper drainage, and the water stops at this hard caking. Ah, I shall make a vast change here. I shall have a steam-plough at work that will turn up the ground twelve inches deeper than the common plough does, and without a foot being set on the ground. Then I shall improve the breed of cattle. You have lots of wool and poor mutton; we had first-class mutton, but little wool. Now I mean to get the two things together here. I am certain to do it; it's to be done by what some people call science, and other folks, common sense. Then the bullocks, I have an idea or two about those; there's a deal to be done yet in crossing breeds, and I believe that I'm the man to do it. I've capital, you see, and I can stand a little waiting, and even a bad season or two. And it mayn't be this year, nor next, no, nor the year after that, but I'm sure to turn over heaps of money in the end. And I'm sure some one to help me, of course, in the home work. And I flatter myself I've got a nice, sensible lass, with no fine lady ways about her, and I'm going to bring her home about Michaelmas. I shall have all ready in the house for her by then, and I'll warrant she'll soon make all tidy and comfortable. She'll see after the cows, and the poultry, and the eggs. Why, there are millions of eggs sent to this country from France, from Ostend, every year. Why shouldn't we have the price of them? Ah, I shall institute a reform in a good many things about here. I shall make my own fortune, and the fortune, I dare say, of many another, too. I shall—well, I can't tell you half of what I've decided to do, even this very year." "A'n't there no p'r'aps?" This was what the simple-minded old man said, and thus he checked the flow of the farmer's talk. The God-fearing peasant's thoughts had been troubled and bewildered by the confident and presumptuous predictions of the farmer. Something he felt constrained to say, and the lessons that had sunk into his mind from his study of God's word, the teaching of a chapter in St. James' epistle general, had thus simply and naturally shaped itself into this artless, yet subtile question:—"A'n't there no p'r'aps?" The farmer, hereupon, as one who had had an unwelcome truth brought home to him, rode off in silence, if not in dudgeon. Yet who knows what effect that simple word, spoken thus in season, might have had upon his heart? There was need. I tell a true story, and the question was thus asked, and the event came about as I am now to relate. The young farmer fell ill before the autumn came. His complaint was pronounced to be a cancer, and by Christmas he lay in the church-yard. And where then were all his plans laid up for many years? "A'n't there no p'r'aps?" The words in the old man's mouth seemed an inspired warning from God. Small need is there to point the moral of the tale.—Sunday at Home.