added Mr
Merton, "are very insufficient to return the favours I have received,
for it is to your excellent family, together with the virtuous Mr
Barlow, that I owe the preservation of my son. Let me therefore entreat
you to accept of what this pocket-book contains, as a slight proof of my
sentiments, and lay it out in whatever manner you please for the
advantage of your family."

Mr Sandford, who was a man both of sense and humour, took the book, and
examining the inside, found that it contained bank-notes to the amount
of some hundred pounds. He then carefully shut it up again, and,
returning it to Mr Merton, told him that he was infinitely obliged to
him for the generosity which prompted him to such a princely act; but,
as to the present itself, he must not be offended if he declined it. Mr
Merton, still more astonished at such disinterestedness, pressed him
with every argument he could think of; he desired him to consider the
state of his family; his daughters unprovided for, his son himself, with
dispositions that might adorn a throne, brought up to labour, and his
own advancing age, which demanded ease and respite, and an increase of
the conveniences of life.

"And what," replied the honest farmer, "is it but these conveniences of
life that are the ruin of all the nation? When I was a young man, Master
Merton (and that is near forty years ago), people in my condition
thought of nothing but doing their duty to God and man, and labouring
hard; this brought down a blessing upon their heads, and made them
thrive in all their worldly concerns. When I was a boy, farmers did not
lie droning in bed, as they do now, till six or seven; my father, I
believe, was as good a judge of business as any in the neighbourhood,
and turned as straight a furrow as any ploughman in the county of Devon;
that silver cup which I intend to have the honour of drinking your
health out of to-day at dinner--that very cup was won by him at the
great ploughing-match near Axminster. Well, my father used to say that a
farmer was not worth a farthing that was not in the field by four; and
my poor dear mother, too, the best-tempered woman in the world, she
always began milking exactly at five; and if a single soul was to be
found in bed after four in the summer, you might have heard her from one
end of the farm to the other. I would not disparage anybody, or
anything, my good sir; but those were times indeed; the women then knew
something about the m