accustomed to treat;
but, such was not the precise nature of the job he was now employed to
execute. At Ravensnest, he could not flourish the feudal grievance of
the quarter-sales, the "four fat fowls," the "days' works," and the
_length_ of the leases. Here it was clearly his cue to say nothing of
the three first, and to complain of the _shortness_ of the leases, as
mine were about to fall in, in considerable numbers. Finding it was
necessary to take new ground, he determined it should be bold ground,
and such as would give him the least trouble to get along with.

As soon as the lecturer had got through with his general heads, and felt
the necessity of coming down to particulars, he opened upon the family
of Littlepage, in a very declamatory way. What had they ever done for
the country, he demanded, that _they_ should be lords in the land? By
some process known to himself, he had converted landlords into lords in
the land, and was now aiming to make the tenants occupy the latter
station--nay, both stations. Of course, some services of a public
character, of which the Littlepages might boast, were not touched upon
at all, everything of that nature being compressed into what the
lecturer and his audience deemed serving the people, by helping to
indulge them in all their desires, however rapacious or wicked. As
everybody who knows anything of the actual state of matters among us,
must be aware how rarely the "people" hear the truth, when their own
power and interests are in question, it is not surprising that a very
shallow reasoner was enabled to draw wool over the eyes of the audience
of Ravensnest on that particular subject.

But my interest was most awakened when this man came to speak of myself.
It is not often that a man enjoys the same opportunity as that I then
possessed to hear his own character delineated, and his most private
motives analyzed. In the first place, the audience were told that this
"young Hugh Littlepage had never done anything for the land that he
proudly, and like a great European noble, he calls his 'estate.' Most of
you, fellow-citizens, can show your hard hands, and recall the burning
suns under which you have opened the swarth, through those then lovely
meadows yonder, as _your_ titles to these farms. But, Hugh Littlepage
never did a day's work in his life"--ten minutes before he had been
complaining of the "days' work" in the Manor leases as indignities that
a freeman ought not to submit