My wife has had to do with many parochial committees from time to time, and I have often trembled for my Chippendale chairs when these meetings, accompanied by tea, have been held at my house, for it is not everybody who regards them with the reverence due to their external beauty and true inwardness, or who recognizes in them the "Tea-cup times of hood and hoop, Or while the patch was worn." A very successful afternoon was one I spent at a sale at North Littleton. I remember the beautiful spring day, and the old weather-worn grey house in an orchard of immense pear-trees covered with sheets of snowy blossom. I secured a Jacobean elm chest with well-carved panels, a Jacobean oak chest of drawers on a curious stand, a complete tea set of Staffordshire ware, including twelve cups and saucers, teapot, and other pieces, with Chinese decoration; four Nankin blue handleless tea-cups, a Delft plate, and a Battersea enamel patch-box. My bill was a very moderate one, but the executor who had the matter of the sale in hand was well pleased that these old family relics had passed into the possession of someone who would value them, and not to careless and indifferent neighbours, and was more than satisfied with the amount realized. Next morning, as a token of his satisfaction, he brought me a charming old brass Dutch tobacco box, with an oil painting inside the lid, of a smoker enjoying a pipe. I have seen some amusing incidents at sales of household goods in remote places; incredulous smiles as to the possibility of the usefulness of anything in the shape of a bath generally greeted the appearance of such an article, and on one of these occasions an ancient, with great gravity, and as an apology for its existence, remarked that it was "A very good thing for an invalid!" I am reminded thereby of an old-fashioned hunting man in Surrey, who was astonished to hear from a friend of mine that he enjoyed a cold bath every morning. He "didn't think," he said, "that cold water was at all a good thing--_next to the skin_!" CHAPTER XXV. DIALECT--LOCAL PHRASEOLOGY IN SHAKESPEARE--NAMES--STUPID PLACES. "Our echoes roll from soul to soul." --_The Princess_. Compulsory education has eliminated many of the old words and phrases formerly in general use in Worcestershire, and is still striving to substitute a more "genteel," but not always more correct, and a much less picturesque, form of speech. When I first went to Aldington I found it difficult to understand the dialect, but I soon got accustomed to it, and used it myself in speaking to the villagers. Farrar used to tell us at school, in one of the resounding phrases of which he was rather fond, that "All phonetic corruption is due to muscular effeminacy," which accounts for some of the words in use, but does not alter the fact that many so-called corrupt words are more correct than the modern accepted form.