The Revolution in Tanner's LaneWhite, William Hale
General
The Revolution in Tanner's Lane
White, William Hale
England -- Fiction; Religious fiction
horn slung at the side of the cart, and was popularly believed also to
have pistols with him. He never accosted anybody; sat on a solitary
perch just big enough for him; swayed always backwards and forwards a
little in a melancholy fashion as he rode; was never seen during the
day-time, and was not, in any proper sense, a Cowfold person.
Cowfold had four streets, or, more correctly, only two, which crossed one
another at right angles in the middle of the town, and formed there a
kind of square or open place, in which, on Saturdays, a market was held.
The “Angel” was in this square, and the shops grouped themselves round
it. In the centre was a large pump with a great leaden spout that had a
hole bored in it at the side. By stopping up the mouth of the spout with
the hand it was possible through this hole to get a good drink, if a
friend was willing to work the handle; and as the square was a public
playground, the pump did good service, especially amongst the boys, all
of whom preferred it greatly to a commonplace mug. On Sundays it was
invariably chained up; for although it was no breach of the Sabbath to
use the pump in the backyard, the line was drawn there, and it would have
been voted by nine-tenths of Cowfold as decidedly immoral to get water
from the one outside. The shops were a draper’s, a grocer’s, an
ironmonger’s, a butcher’s and a baker’s. All these were regular shops,
with shop-windows, and were within sight of one another.
There were also other houses where things were sold; but these were mere
dwelling-houses, and were at the poorer and more remote ends of Cowfold.
None of the regular shops aforesaid were strictly what they professed to
be. Each of them diverged towards “the general.” The draper sold boots
and shoes; the grocer sold drugs, stationery, horse and cow medicines,
and sheep ointment; and the ironmonger dealt in crockery. Even the
butcher was more than a butcher, for he was never to be seen at his
chopping block, and his wife did all the retail work. He himself was in
the “jobbing” line, and was always jogging about in a cart, in the hind
part of which, covered with a net, was a calf or a couple of pigs. Three
out of the four streets ran out in cottages; but one was more
aristocratic. This was Church Street, which contained the church and the
parsonage. It also had in it four red brick houses, each surrounded with
large gardens. In one lived a brewer who had a brewery in Cowfold, and
owned a dozen beer-shops in the neighbourhood; another was a seminary for
young ladies; in the third lived the doctor; and in the fourth old Mr.
and Mrs. Muston, who had no children, had been there for fifty years; and
this, so far as Cowfold was aware, was all their history. Mr. and Mrs.
Muston and the seminary were the main strength of the church. To be sure
the doctor and the landlord of the “Angel” professed devotion to the
Establishment, but they were never inside the church, except just now and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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