t; but I, knowing the nature of
him from a boy, took my pipe and began telling him how he was beloved
and regretted in the country. And it did him a great deal of good to
hear it.

There was a great horn at the lodge that used to belong to the
celebrated Sir Patrick, who was reported to have drunk the full of it
without stopping to draw breath, which no other man, afore or since,
could do.

One night Sir Condy was drinking with the excise-man and the gauger, and
wagered that he could do it. Says he, "Your hand is steadier than mine,
Old Thady; fill you the horn for me." And so, wishing his honour
success, I did. He swallowed it down and dropped like one shot. We put
him to bed, and for five days the fever came and went, and came and
went. On the sixth he says, knowing me very well, "I'm in a burning pain
all withinside of me, Thady." I could not speak. "Brought to this by
drink," says he. "Where are all the friends? Gone, hey? Ay, Sir Condy
has been a fool all his days," said he, and died. He had but a very poor
funeral, after all.

* * * * *

GEORGE ELIOT

Adam Bede

Mary Ann Evans ("George Eliot") was born Nov. 22, 1819, at
South Farm, Arbury, Warwickshire, England, where her father
was agent on the Newdigate estate. In her youth, she was adept
at butter-making and similar rural work, but she found time to
master Italian and German. Her first important literary work
was the translation of Strauss's "Life of Jesus" in 1844, and
shortly after her father's death in 1849 she was writing in
the "Westminster Review." It was not until 1856 that George
Eliot settled down to the writing of novels. "Scenes from
Clerical Life" first appeared serially in "Blackwood's
Magazine" during 1857 and 1858; "Adam Bede," the first and
most popular of her long stories, in 1859. In May, 1880,
eighteen months after the death of her friend George Henry
Lewes (see PHILOSOPHY, Vol. XIV), George Eliot married Mr. J.
W. Cross. She died on December 22 in the same year. With all
her sense of humour there is a note of sadness in George
Eliot's novels. She deals with ordinary, everyday people, and
describes their joys and sorrows. In "Adam Bede," as in most
of her work, the novelist drew from the ample stores of her
early life in the Midlands, while the plot is unfolded with
singular simplicity, pu