He has annoyed him excessively, by
enforcing the vagrant laws; persecuting the gipsies, and endeavouring
to suppress country wakes and holiday games; which he considers great
nuisances, and reprobates as causes of the deadly sin of idleness.
There is evidently in all this a little of the ostentation of
newly-acquired consequence; the tradesman is gradually swelling into
the aristocrat; and he begins to grow excessively intolerant of every
thing that is not genteel. He has a great deal to say about "the
common people;" talks much of his park, his preserves, and the
necessity of enforcing the game-laws more strictly; and makes frequent
use of the phrase, "the gentry of the neighbourhood."
He came to the Hall lately, with a face full of business, that he and
the Squire, to use his own words, "might lay their heads together," to
hit upon some mode of putting a stop to the frolicking at the village
on the approaching May-day. It drew, he said, idle people together
from all parts of the neighbourhood, who spent the day fiddling,
dancing, and carousing, instead of staying at home to work for their
families.
Now, as the Squire, unluckily, is at the bottom of these May-day
revels, it may be supposed that the suggestions of the sagacious Mr.
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