Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 10, 2025
The lives of second-rate literary men furnish equally remarkable illustrations of the power of perseverance. The late John Britton, author of 'The Beauties of England and Wales, and of many valuable architectural works, was born in a miserable cot in Kingston, Wiltshire. His father had been a baker and maltster, but was ruined in trade and became insane while Britton was yet a child.
Among the wine-sippers were many familiar faces: the cobbler, the farrier, the blacksmith, the wheelwright, the armorer, the maltster, the weaver, the baker, the miller's man with his dusty coat, and so on; and conscious and important, as a matter of course, was the barber-surgeon, for he is that in all villages.
Weren't I stale in wedlock afore ye were out of arms? 'Tis a poor thing to be sixty, when there's people far past four-score a boast'weak as water." It was the unvaying custom in Weatherbury to sink minor differences when the maltster had to be pacified. "Weak as-water! yes." said Jan Coggan. "Malter, we feel ye to be a wonderful veteran man, and nobody can gainsay it."
"I should imagine that it belonged to some vintner or maltster in the Middle Ages," said I. "I have seen in England leathern drinking flagons of the seventeenth century 'black jacks' as they were called which were of the same colour and hardness as this filler." "I dare say the date would be about the same," said Dacre, "and, no doubt, also, it was used for filling a vessel with liquid.
"Well, if you run across a tall, good-looking man between forty-five and fifty, with blue eyes, who wears a red cloak and cocked hat, and who looks as if he wasn't afeard of the king, the devil, or any of his imps, that is Maltster Sam. We call him Maltster Sam because he once made malt for a living, but didn't live by it because it didn't pay. He's a master hand in town meetings.
In the background, mellowed by tawny shade, were the three women, Maryann Money, and Temperance and Soberness Miller, gathering up the fleeces and twisting ropes of wool with a wimble for tying them round. They were indifferently well assisted by the old maltster, who, when the malting season from October to April had passed, made himself useful upon any of the bordering farmsteads.
It was the unvarying custom in Weatherbury to sink minor differences when the maltster had to be pacified. "Weak as water! yes," said Jan Coggan. "Malter, we feel ye to be a wonderful veteran man, and nobody can gainsay it." "Nobody," said Joseph Poorgrass. "Ye be a very rare old spectacle, malter, and we all admire ye for that gift."
'Tis gape and swaller with us a drap of sommit, but not of much account." said the maltster, removing from the fire his eyes, which were vermilion-red and bleared by gazing into it for so many years. "Take up the God-forgive- me, Jacob. See if 'tis warm, Jacob."
A younger branch of the family the son of the last of the Gledstanes of Arthurshiel after many generations, came to dwell at Biggar, in Lanarkshire, where he conducted the business of a "maltster," or grain merchant. Here, and at about this time, the name was changed to Gladstones, and a grandson of the maltster of Biggar, Thomas Gladstones, settled in Leith and there became a "corn-merchant."
"That is what we are met for," he said; and then "Why, Mr. Mallock, I have not made these other gentlemen known to you." They turned out to be on the right of my Lord, the minister, Mr. Ferguson he who had been spoken of before as an informant from Bristol; and a Colonel Rumsey an old Cromwellian like the maltster of Hoddesdon who sat next to Mr. Ferguson.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking