Most of Mr.Spray's hearers, however, were incapable of following his subtleties, and many old-fashioned Dissenters were much pained by his "siding with the Catholics"; while others thought he had better let politics alone.
Public spirit was not held in high esteem at St.Ogg's, and men who busied themselves with political questions were regarded with some suspicion, as dangerous characters; they were usually persons who had little or no business of their own to manage, or, if they had, were likely enough to become insolvent.
This was the general aspect of things at St.Ogg's in Mrs.Glegg's day, and at that particular period in her family history when she had had her quarrel with Mr.Tulliver.It was a time when ignorance was much more comfortable than at present, and was received with all the honors in very good society, without being obliged to dress itself in an elaborate costume of knowledge; a time when cheap periodicals were not, and when country surgeons never thought of asking their female patients if they were fond of reading, but simply took it for granted that they preferred gossip; a time when ladies in rich silk gowns wore large pockets, in which they carried a mutton-bone to secure them against cramp.

Mrs.Glegg carried such a bone, which she had inherited from her grandmother with a brocaded gown that would stand up empty, like a suit of armor, and a silver-headed walking-stick; for the Dodson family had been respectable for many generations.
Mrs.Glegg had both a front and a back parlor in her excellent house at St.Ogg's, so that she had two points of view from which she could observe the weakness of her fellow-beings, and reinforce her thankfulness for her own exceptional strength of mind.

From her front window she could look down the Tofton Road, leading out of St.Ogg's, and note the growing tendency to "gadding about" in the wives of men not retired from business, together with a practice of wearing woven cotton stockings, which opened a dreary prospect for the coming generation; and from her back windows she could look down the pleasant garden and orchard which stretched to the river, and observe the folly of Mr.Glegg in spending his time among "them flowers and vegetables." For Mr.Glegg, having retired from active business as a wool-stapler for the purpose of enjoying himself through the rest of his life, had found this last occupation so much more severe than his business, that he had been driven into amateur hard labor as a dissipation, and habitually relaxed by doing the work of two ordinary gardeners.

The economizing of a gardener's wages might perhaps have induced Mrs.
Glegg to wink at this folly, if it were possible for a healthy female mind even to simulate respect for a husband's hobby.

But it is well known that this conjugal complacency belongs only to the weaker portion of the sex, who are scarcely alive to the responsibilities of a wife as a constituted check on her husband's pleasures, which are hardly ever of a rational or commendable kind.
Mr.Glegg on his side, too, had a double source of mental occupation, which gave every promise of being inexhaustible.