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"Sirs," she said, addressing her father and Master Freake, "the accolade has never been given to a worthier." Then, bending swiftly as a swallow dips in its flight over the meadows, she whispered emphatically in my ears, "Yokel it no more!" "And now to business," said Master Freake. "To pleasure, sir," said the Colonel. "Business is over."
It reminds one of the West of England yokel, who gave his evidence on a case of homicide in this way: "He had a stick, and he had a stick; and he hit he, and he hit he. And if he'd only hit he as hard as he hit he, he'd a' killed he, and not he he." But we must not be too hard on Bibles and yokels. So long as we can get a scintillation of their meaning we must be satisfied.
But, in 1887, it proved just as impossible to discover whither the Rev. Ansel Bourne had gone. Mr. Bourne's lot was cast, not in the sleepy Royalist Bavaria of 1828, but in the midst of the admired 'hustle' of the great Western Republic. He was one of the most remarkable men in the country, not a yokel of sixteen.
They were not in the best of humours, you may be sure, and although we drew aside and paused with crusts half lifted to our open mouths to stare at them with true yokel admiration, they cursed us for taking up too much of the roadway, and one of them even made a cut with his sabre at the near pannier of eggs. "It's well he broke none," said I as we watched them down the road.
I knew the difference, for instinct is more than experience, and I chilled into the yokel again and wondered. "In one sense, at any rate," said Master Freake, "I am the senior partner, and as such may, without presumption, speak first. I must go on to Stone, but that will, I think, be best for our purpose.
Tom Breeks, the orator, and Jim, transformed from a lurching yokel to a lithe dog of battle, kept the retreat of Ipley, challenging any two of Hillford to settle the dispute. Captain Gambier attempted an authoritative parley, in the midst of which a Hillford man made a long arm and struck Emilia's harp, till the strings jarred loose and horrid.
But it is not they who are most angry; instead, they are giving the "rats" change in kind, returning their "chaff," and even getting the better of them, so much so that some of their would-be tormentors have quite lost their tempers. One is already furious a big hulking fellow, their leader and instigator, and the same who had cried, "country yokel."
Apropos of this he once told me of a yokel who, never having seen a railroad, entered the station with his wife and children long before train time, bought his ticket and waited a while, looking out of the various windows, then finally returned to the ticket-seller and asked, "When does this thing start?" He meant the station building itself.
Howells, taking micro-graphic studies of present-day life in the great centre of American culture; Mr. James, with a clever, weary persiflage skimming the face of society in refined cosmopolitan circles; and Miss Wilkins, observing the bitter humours of the Eastern yokel, are none of them distinctively American either in feeling or expression. Mr.
And he pointed to the half-tipsy yokel who was ploughing down the road. "What do you mean?" asked the atheist. "I mean him," repeated MacIan with emphasis. "He goes out in the early dawn; he digs or he ploughs a field. Then he comes back and drinks ale, and then he sings a song. All your philosophies and political systems are young compared to him.
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