Mrs. Coppinger: It is a queer thing you to be
content, Thomas Coppinger, and you knocking
out a living among the dead. It is no way con-
tent I myself would be, and to be following a trade
that is all for gloom.

Coppinger: It is not, but in the world wide
there is not so lively or so pleasant a trade. Wait
now till I'll sound that out to you. A man to be a
herd now, and to be sent back out of the fair with
beasts, the very time the sport would begin, or to
be landing fish from a hooker and to be made take
the tide at the very minute maybe the crowds
would be gathering for a race, or an assizes, or a
thing of the kind, it is downhearted you would be
coming into your own little place, and all the stir
left after you. But to be turning back from a bury-
ing, and you living, and all that company lying
dumb, and the rain coming down through the clay
over their heads, and their friends crying them,
that is the time your own little cabin would shine
out as good as a wake house, in the time a wake
house was all one with a dance house.

Mrs. Coppinger: That is not so in this place.
No playing or funning or springing, but to be talk-
ing they do be, stupid talk about themselves and
to be smoking tobacco.

Coppinger: And another thing. It is very
answerable to the soul to be always letting your

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