He had no opinion of people who had a finger in everybody's pie.
Whom Tom tried to soothe with honeyed words, knowing him to be of the original British bulldog breed, which, once stroked against the hair, shows his teeth at you for ever afterwards.
But staunch was Tardrew, unfortunately on the wrong side; and backed by the collective ignorance, pride, laziness, and superstition of Aberalva, showed to his new assailant that terrible front of stupidity, against which, says Schiller, "the gods themselves fight in vain." "Does he think we was all fools afore he came here ?" That was the rallying cry of the Conservative party, worshippers of Baalzebub, god of flies, and of that (so say Syrian scholars) from which flies are bred.

And, indeed, there were excuses for them, on the Yankee ground, that "there's a deal of human natur' in man." It is hard to human nature to make all the humiliating confessions which must precede sanitary repentance; to say, "I have been a very nasty, dirty fellow.

I have lived contented in evil smells, till I care for them no more than my pig does.

I have refused to understand Nature's broadest hints, that anything which is so disagreeable is not meant to be left about.

I have probably been more or less the cause of half my own illnesses, and of three-fourths of the illness of my children; for aught I know, it is very much my fault that my own baby has died of scarlatina, and two or three of my tenants of typhus.