t day, it was not from want
of good wishes, any more than from stint of the liquor.

It is needless to say that the real gentry for a long time treated my
new honours with contempt and ridicule; but gradually as they found that
I was not such a fool as to claim any equality with them, but went about
my farm-work, and threw another man at wrestling, and touched my hat to
the magistrates, just the same as ever; some gentlemen of the highest
blood--of which we think a great deal more than of gold, around our
neighbourhood--actually expressed a desire to make my acquaintance.
And when, in a manner quite straightforward, and wholly free from
bitterness, I thanked them for this (which appeared to me the highest
honour yet offered me), but declined to go into their company because it
would make me uncomfortable, and themselves as well, in a different
way, they did what nearly all Englishmen do, when a thing is right and
sensible. They shook hands with me; and said that they could not deny
but that there was reason in my view of the matter. And although they
themselves must be the losers--which was a handsome thing to say--they
would wait until I was a little older and more aware of my own value.

Now this reminds me how it is that an English gentleman is so far in
front of foreign noblemen and princes. I have seen at times, a little,
both of one and of the other, and making more than due allowance for
the difficulties of language, and the difference of training, upon the
whole, the balance is in favour of our people. And this, because we have
two weights, solid and (even in scale of manners) outweighing all light
complaisance; to wit, the inborn love of justice, and the power of
abiding.

Yet some people may be surprised that men with any love of justice,
whether inborn or otherwise, could continue to abide the arrogance, and
rapacity, and tyranny of the Doones.

For now as the winter passed, the Doones were not keeping themselves at
home, as in honour they were bound to do. Twenty sheep a week, and one
fat ox, and two stout red deer (for wholesome change of diet), as well
as threescore bushels of flour, and two hogsheads and a half of cider,
and a hundredweight of candles, not to mention other things of almost
every variety which they got by insisting upon it--surely these might
have sufficed to keep the people in their place, with no outburst of
wantonness. Nevertheless, it was not so; they had made complaint about
somet