Cloughton is a small quiet village, with a _Red Lion_ to match, where you may get good rustic fare--cakes, bacon, and eggs--and a simple chamber. The landlord, a patriarch of eighty-five, still hale, and active, who sat warming his knees at the turf fire, opened his budget of reminiscences concerning Scarborough. The change from what it was to what it is, was wonderful. He went there at election times. Had once been to vote at York, years ago, "when there was a hard fight betuxt a Milton and a Lascelles." Had never been to London, but his niece went up to the Great Exhibition. While we talked, in came a shabby-looking fellow with a six days' beard, for a pint of beer. He had been trout-fishing all day on the moors--one of his means of living. He stayed but a few minutes, and as he went out the patriarch said, "He's a roughish one to look at, but he can make powetry." It was too late to call him back, or I might perhaps have got a specimen.
Then came in the rustics in twos and threes for their evening pint and pipe, most of them preferring hard porter to the ale, which was really good. Not one had a complaint to make of hard times: wages were one and sixpence a day, and meat, and good meat, too--beef and mutton and pies--as much as they could eat. They didn't want to emigrate; Yorkshire was quite good enough for them. While talking to them and listening to their conversation among themselves, my old conviction strengthened that the rural folk are not the fools they are commonly taken to be. Choose such words as they are familiar with--such as John Bunyan uses--and you can make them understand any ordinary subject and take pleasure in it. And how happy they are when you can suggest an illustration from something common to their daily life! I would have undertaken to give an hour's lecture on terrestrial magnetism even, to that company; and not one should have wished it shorter. And once having broken through their crust of awkwardness, you find them possessed of a good fund of common sense, quick to discern between the plausible and what they feel to be true. Flattering speeches made at hay-homes and harvest-homes are taken for what they are worth; and the sunburnt throng are everywhere ready to applaud the sentiment conveyed in a reaper's reply to a complimentary toast: