nd bottle into his pocket, and
left the house widout once wishing "Good night, an' plaisant dhrames to
you"; and, in troth, not one of _them_ axed him to lave them a lock ov
his hair.

That's the story as I heard it tould: but myself doesn't b'lieve over
one half of it. Howandiver, when all's done, it's a shame, so it is,
that he's not a bishop this blessed day and hour: for, next to the
goiant ov Saint Garlath's, he's out and out the cleverest fellow ov the
whole jing-bang.

JOHNNY DARBYSHIRE.

BY WILLIAM HOWITT.

John Darbyshire, or, according to the regular custom of the country,
Johnny Darbyshire, was a farmer living in one of the most obscure parts
of the country, on the borders of the Peak of Derbyshire. His fathers
before him had occupied the same farm for generations; and as they had
been Quakers from the days of George Fox, who preached there and
converted them, Johnny also was a Quaker. That is, he was, as many
others were, and no doubt are, habitually a Quaker. He was a Quaker in
dress, in language, in attendance of their meetings, and, above all, in
the unmitigated contempt which he felt and expressed for everything like
fashion, for the practices of the world, for the Church, and for music
and amusements. There never was a man, from the first to the present day
of the society, who so thoroughly embodied and exhibited that quality
attributed to the Quaker, in the rhyming nursery alphabet,--"Q was a
Quaker, and would not bow down."

No, Johnny Darbyshire would not have bowed down to any mortal power. He
would have marched into the presence of the king with his hat on, and
would have addressed him with just the same unembarrassed freedom as
"The old chap out of the West Countrie" is made to do in the song. As to
any of the more humble and conceding qualities usually attributed to the
peaceful Quaker, Johnny had not an atom of those about him. Never was
there a more pig-headed, arbitrary, positive, pugnacious fellow. He
would argue anybody out of their opinions by the hour; he would "threep
them down," as he called it, that is, point blank and with a loud voice
insist on his own possession of the right, and of the sound common-sense
of the matter; and if he could not convince them, would at least
confound them with his obstreperous din and violence of action. That was
what he called clearing the field, and not leaving his antagonist a leg
to stand on. Having thus fairly overwhelmed, dumfoundered,