CHAPTER XLIII
LITTLE AND GREAT PEOPLE
If ever a wise man departed from wisdom, or a sober place from sobriety,
the man was John Prater, and the place Springhaven, towards the middle
of June, 1804. There had been some sharp rumours of great things before;
but the best people, having been misled so often, shook their heads
without produce of their contents; until Captain Stubbard came out in
his shirt sleeves one bright summer morning at half past nine, with a
large printed paper in one hand and a slop basin full of hot paste in
the other. His second boy, George, in the absence of Bob (who was now
drawing rations at Woolwich), followed, with a green baize apron on, and
carrying a hearth-brush tied round with a string to keep the hair stiff.
"Lay it on thick on the shutter, my son. Never mind about any other
notices, except the one about young men wanted. No hurry; keep your
elbow up; only don't dab my breeches, nor the shirt you had on Sunday."
By this time there were half a dozen people waiting; for this shutter of
Widow Shanks was now accepted as the central board and official panel
of all public business and authorised intelligence. Not only because all
Royal Proclamations, Offers of reward, and Issues of menace were
posted on that shutter and the one beyond the window (which served as
a postscript and glossary to it), but also inasmuch as the kind-hearted
Captain, beginning now to understand the natives--which was not to be
done pugnaciously, as he had first attempted it, neither by any show of
interest in them (than which they detested nothing more), but by taking
them coolly, as they took themselves, and gradually sliding, without any
thought about it, into the wholesome contagion of their minds, and the
divine gift of taking things easily--our Captain Stubbard may be fairly
now declared to have made himself almost as good as a native, by the way
in which he ministered to their content.
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