Surely that is a lovely story, full of real sweetness and pathos.
It reminds me that amid many half-types of dubious quality, selfish,
covetous, quarrelsome, litigious, there are at least two types of Manx
character entirely charming and delightful. The one is the best type of
Manx seaman, a true son of the sea, full of wise saws and proverbs, full
of long yarns and wondrous adventures, up to anything, down to anything,
pragmatical, a mighty moralist in his way, but none the less equal to
a round ringing oath; a sapient adviser putting on the airs of a
philosopher, but as simple as the baby of a girl--in a word, dear old
Tom Baynes of "Fo'c's'le Yarns," old salt, old friend, old rip. The
other type is that of the Manx parish patriarch. This good soul it
would be hard to beat among all the peoples of earth. He unites the best
qualities of both sexes; he is as soft and gentle as a dear old woman,
and as firm of purpose as a strong man. Garrulous, full of platitudes,
easily moved to tears by a story of sorrow and as easily taken in, but
beloved and trusted and reverenced by all the little world about him.
I have known him as a farmer, and seen him sitting at the head of his
table in the farm kitchen, with his sons and daughters and men-servants
and women-servants about him, and, save for ribald gossip, no one of
whatever condition abridged the flow of talk for his presence. I have
known him as a parson, when he has been the father of his parish, the
patriarch of his people, the "ould angel" of all the hillside round
about. Such sweetness in his home life, such nobility, such gentle,
old-fashioned ceremoniousness, such delightful simplicity of manners.
Then when two of these "ould angels" met, two of these Parson Adamses,
living in content on seventy pounds a year, such high talk on great
themes, long hour after long hour in the little low-ceiled Vicarage
study, with no light but the wood fire, which glistened on the diamond
window-pane! And when midnight came seeing each other home, spending
half the night walking to and fro from Vicarage to Vicarage, or turning
out to saddle the horse in the field, but (far away "in wandering mazes
lost") going blandly up to the old cow and putting on the blinkers and
saying, "Here he is, sir." Have we anything like all this in England?
Their type is nearly extinct even in the Isle of Man, where they have
longest survived. And indeed they are not the only good things that are
dying out there.