'em by the 'oller sound as they makes. And them's the folks as spoils the old Bible.

"Not but what there's things in the Bible as is 'oller to begin wi'. But there's plenty that isn't, if these talkin' chaps 'ud only leave it alone. Now, here's a bit as I calls tip-top: 'When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers'" (here Snarley quoted several verses of the Eighth Psalm).

"Now, when you gets hold on a bit like that, you don't want to go dressin' on it up. You just puts it in your pipe and smokes it, and then it does you good! That's it!

"There's was once a Salvation Army man as come and asked me if I accepted the Gospel. 'Yes, my lad,' I sez; 'I've accepted it—but only as a thing to smoke, not as a thing to go bangin' about. Put your drum in the cup-board, my lad,' I sez; 'and put the Gospel in your pipe, and you'll be a wiser man.'

"As for all this 'ere argle-bargling about them big things, there's nowt in it, you take my word for that! The little things for argle-bargle, the big uns' for smokin', that's what I sez! Put the big 'uns in your pipe, sir; put 'em in your pipe, and smoke 'em!"

These last words were spoken in tones of great solemnity and repeated several times.

"That's good advice, Snarley," I said; "but the writer you just quoted hadn't got a pipe to put 'em in."

"Didn't need one," said Snarley; "there weren't so many talkin' men about in his time. Folks then were born right end up to begin wi', and didn't need to smoke 'emselves round.

"Ay, ay, sir, I often think about them old days—and it's the Bible as set me thinkin' on 'em. That's the only old book as I ever read. And there's some staggerers in it, I can tell you! Wonderful! If some o' them old Bible men could come back and hear the parsons talkin' about 'em—eh, my word, there would be a rumpus! I'd like to see it, that I would! I'll tell you one thing, sir—and don't you forget it—you'll never understand the old Bible, leastways not the best bits in it, so long as you only wants to talk about 'em, same as a man allus wants to do when he's stuck inside his own skin. Now, there's that bit about the heavens, as I just give you—that's a bit o' real all-right, isn't it?"

"Yes," I said, "it is."

"Well, can't you see as the man as said them words had just let himself out to the other end o' the line and was lookin' back? He'd got himself right into the middle o' the bigness o' things, and that's what you can't do as long as you keeps inside your own skin. But I tell you that when you gets outside for the first time it gives you a pretty shakin' up. You begins to think what a fool you've been all your life long."

Beyond such statements as these, repeated many times and in many forms, I could get no light on Snarley's dealings with the heavens.

To interpret his dealings with "the spirits" is a still harder task. It was one of his common sayings that this matter also could not be discussed in terms intelligible to the once-born. That he did not mean by "spirits" what the vulgar might suppose, is certain. It is true that at one time he used to attend spiritualistic séances held in a large neighbouring village, and he was commonly regarded as a "medium." This latter term was adopted by Snarley in many conversations I had with him as a true description of himself. But here again it was obvious that he used the term only for want of a better. He never employed it without some sort of caveat, uttered or implied, to the effect that the word must be taken with qualifications—unstated qualifications, but still suggestive of important distinctions.

It is noteworthy in this connection that a bitter quarrel existed between Snarley and the spiritualists with whom he had once been associated. They had cast him forth from among them as a smoking brand; and Snarley on his part never lost a chance of denouncing them as liars and rogues. One of the most violent scenes ever witnessed in the tap-room of the Nag's Head had been perpetrated by Snarley on a certain occasion when Shoemaker Hankin was defending the thesis that all forms of religion might now be considered as done for, "except spiritualism." Even Hankin, who reverenced no thing in heaven or earth, had protested against the unprintable words which with Snarley greeted his logic; while the landlord (Tom Barter of happy memory), himself the lowest black-guard in the village, had suggested that he should "draw it mild."

This reminds me that Snarley regarded strong drink as a means, and a legitimate means, for obtaining access to hidden things; nor did he scruple at times to use it for that end. "There's nowt like a drop o' drink for openin' the door," he remarked. "But only for them as is born to it. If you're not born to it, drink shuts the door on you tighter nor ever. There's not one man in ten that drink doesn't make a bigger fool of than he is already. Look at Shoemaker Hankin. Half a pint of cider'll set him hee-hawin' like the Rectory donkey. But there's some men as can't get a lift no other way. It's like that wi' me sometimes. There's weeks and weeks together when I'm fair stuck inside my own skin and can't get out on it nohow. That's when I know a drop'll do me good. I can a'most hear something go click in my head, and then I gets among 'em" (the spirits) "in no time. A pint's mostly enough to do it; but sometimes it takes a quart; and once or twice I've had to go on till somebody's had to help me home. But when once I begins I never stops till I see the door openin'—and then not a drop more!"

"SNARLEYCHOLOGY"

II. EXPERIMENTAL

One day I was discussing with Mrs. Abel the oft-recurrent problem of Snarley's peculiar mental constitution, a subject to which she had given the name "Snarleychology."[2] Her knowledge of the old man's ways was of longer date than mine, and she understood him infinitely better than I. "Suppose, now," I said "that Snarley had been able to express himself after the manner of superlative people like you and me, what would have come of it?" "Art," said Mrs. Abel, "and most probably poetry. He's just a mass of intuitions!" "What a pity they are inarticulate!" I answered, repeating the appropriate commonplace. "But they are not inarticulate," said Mrs. Abel. "Snarley has found a medium of expression which gives him perfect satisfaction." "Then the poems ought to be in existence," said I. "So they are," was the answer; "they exist in the shape of Farmer Perryman's big rams. The rams are the direct creations of genius working upon appropriate material. None but a dreamer of dreams could have brought them into being; every one of them is an embodied ideal. Don't make the blunder of thinking that Snarley's sheep-raising has nothing to do with his star-gazings and spirit-rappings. It's all one. Shakespeare writes Hamlet, and Snarley produces 'Thunderbolt.'[3] To call Snarley inarticulate because he hasn't written a Hamlet is as absurd as it would be to call Shakespeare inarticulate because he didn't produce a 'Thunderbolt.' Both Hamlet and 'Thunderbolt' were born in the highest heaven of invention. Both are the fruit of intuitions concentrated on their object with incredible pertinacity."

I was forced into silence for a time, bewildered by a statement which seemed to alternate between levelling the big things down to the little ones, and raising the little ones to the level of the big. When I had chewed this hard saying as well as I could, I bolted it for further digestion, and continued the conversation. "Has Snarley," I asked, "ever been tried with