A gentleman once told me that, having to call on this man about some money transaction, he was detained till twelve o’clock, and desired to stay dinner, that being his hour. Out of curiosity he consented. Every thing about the house was in the rudest and most desolate state. I do not know whether they had a cloth spread on the sturdy oak table, which supported a set of pewter plates, a roasted fowl, and a pudding in a huge brown earthen dish. The wife, stripped to her stays and quilted petticoat, was too busy making cheese and scolding the servants to come to dinner. The _pater familias_ and his guest sat down together. As he cut up the fowl, the two great lads, Dick and Ben, then about twelve and fourteen years of age, came with their wild eyes staring sharply out of their bushy heads of wild hair, and hung over their father’s chair, one on each side, with an eager expression of voracity; for they were not asked to sit down. The father, as if he expected them to pounce on the dinner and carry it off, kept a sharp look-out on them; and though, out of deference to his guest, he restrained his curses, he kept vociferating, as he turned first to one and then to the other, and then gave a cut at the fowl--“Ben! Dick! get away, lads! get away! get away! get away!” But the moment a leg and a wing were cut off, the lads made a sudden spring, and each seizing a joint, bounded out of the apartment, leaving the old man in wonder at the unmanageableness of his sons. From such an education who can doubt the result?--a brood of savages, the nuisance of the neighbourhood, and torment of the old man’s days. To such a height has the old man’s agony arisen at times, as he saw the wasteful conduct of his sons, that it is a pretty well established fact, that on one occasion he threw himself down in a ditch in one of his own fields, and--did not pray to die, for he never knew the beginning, middle, or end of a prayer, but he _tried_ to die; but, after a long and weary endeavour, finding it in vain, he got up and hobbled off home again, saying--“Well, I see it is as hard to die as to live. I can’t die! I can’t die! I must even bear it, till these lads kill me by inches--and that must be a plaguy while first; for I measure two yards of bad stuff, and I think I’m as hard as a nur,[5] and as tough as whit-leather.” [5] Nur--a hard knot of wood used by boys at bandy instead of a ball.