In her charming little volume of "Lancashire Memories,"[5] Mrs Potter gives a racy story of the new vicar of a Lancashire Parish in an encounter with one of the natives. She remarks: "There is a quaint simplicity about the country people in Lancashire, that wants a name in our vocabulary of manners, as far removed from the vulgarity of the lower orders in the town on the one hand, as from the polished conversationalisms of the higher classes on the other; a simplicity that asserts itself because of its simplicity, and that never heard, and if it did, never understood 'who's who.' Imagine the surprise of the new vicar of the parish, fresh from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in all the dignity of the shovel hat and garments of a rigidly clerical orthodoxy, accustomed to an agricultural population that smoothed down its forelocks in deference to the vicar, but never dreamed of bandying words with him: imagine him losing his way in one of his distant parochial excursions, and inquiring, in a dainty south-country accent, from a lubberly boy weeding turnips in a field, 'Pray, my boy, can you tell me the way to Bolton?' [5] "Lancashire Memories," by Louise Potter. Macmillan & Co., London, 1879. "'Ay,' replied the boy. 'Yo' mun go across yon bleach croft and into th' loan, and yo'll get to Doffcocker, and then yo're i' th' high road, and yo' can go straight on.' "'Thank you,' said the vicar, 'perhaps I can find it. And now, my boy, will you tell me what you do for a livelihood?' "'I clear up th' shippon, pills potatoes, or does oddin; and if I may be so bou'd, win yo' tell me what yo' do?' "'Oh, I am a minister of the Gospel; I preach the Word of God.' "'But what dun yo' do?' persisted the boy. "'I teach you the way of salvation; I show you the road to heaven.' "'Nay, nay,' said the lad; 'dunnot yo' pretend to teach me th' road to heaven, and doesn't know th' road to Bow'ton.'" * * * * * Certain shrewd remarks are sometimes made which imply a good deal more than they express. The following will illustrate what I mean. As justifying the regrettable fact that men who have risen from the ranks, and, having attained to opulence, are often found to change their politics, we have heard a "Radical" defined as "a Tory beawt brass." This is akin to John Stuart Mill's specious saying, that some men were Radicals because they were not Lords. Alluding to the recent death of a person of wealth whose character was not of the best, a Lancashire man remarked: "Well, if he took his brass wi' him, it's melted by this time!" Waugh used to tell the story of a man having run to catch a train, and was just in time to see it leaving the railway station, puff, puff, puff. He stood looking at it for a second or two, and then gave vent to his injured feelings by exclaiming: "Go on, tha greyt puffin' foo, go on! aw con wait!"