More than once has he boarded me in that fashion.
What do you think he said to me, now, one day as I was a mowin' of the grass in the court, close by the white horse that spout up the water high as a house from his nose-drills?
Says he to me--for he come down the grand staircase, and steps out and spies me at the work with my old scythe, and come across to me, and says he, "Why, Thomas," says he, not knowin' of my name, "Why, Thomas," says he, "you look like old Time himself a mowing of us all down," says he.

"For sure, my lord," says I, "your lordship reads it aright, for all flesh is grass, and all the glory of man is as the flower of the field." He look humble at that, for, great man as he be, his earthly tabernacle, though more than sizeable, is but a frail one, and that he do know.

And says he, "Where did you read that, Thomas ?" "I am not a larned man, please your lordship," says I, "and I cannot honestly say I read it nowheres, but I heerd the words from a book your lordship have had news of: they do call it the Holy Bible.

But they tell me that they of your lordship's persuasion like it not." "You are very much mistaken there, Thomas," says he.

"I read my Bible most days, only not the English Bible, which is full of errors, but the Latin, which is all as God gave it," says he.
And thereby I had not where to answer withal.' 'I fear you proved a poor champion of the truth, master Croning.' 'Confess now, Cast-down Upstill, had he not both sun and wind of me--standing, so to say, on his own hearth-stone?
Had it not been so, I could have called hard names with the best of you, though that is by rights the gift of the preachers of the truth.