recommendations to much popularity in the squire’s kitchen.  Perhaps no being that ever breathed had so fair an excuse for becoming a misanthrope.  His coarse and repulsive exterior, with his churlish manners, and one unchangeable suit of old patched ill-looking clothes, combined to make him an object of distaste to the girls, to whom, and the young men, he became a general butt of ridicule yet only among themselves, for they were fully aware, that it would be a less dangerous experiment to catch a mad bull by the horns, than to rouse the choler of Jack o Sîr Gâr.  The standing jest against him was, his qualifications as a trencherman, and his reputation as a “huge feeder” was certainly unrivalled.  As there was not a single pastime under the head of amusement, that the ingenuity of man has ever devised for the entertainment of his fellows, save eating, that possessed a charm for him, it might be expected that this solitary recreation would be indulged in the proportion that he excluded all others.  He not only performed all the functions of the gross glutton, but as the actors say, “looked the character” to perfection.

The reader, measuring him by other men, would make a very erroneous guess on the most prominent feature of his face, if he fixed on the nasal protuberance—no such thing—his nose was flat and small, but his large projecting upper teeth, like “rocks of peril jutting o’er the sea,” were ever bared for action, white as those of his only companion, the mastiff, and nobly independent of a sheathing lip.

Others more comely features might wear,
But Jack was famed for his white teeth bare.

As the squire’s lady was not the most liberal in supplying the servants’ table, those wags, male or female, who were in the habit of committing the silent satire of mimickry against Jack, were soon taught a severe lesson at the expence of their bowels.  It was discovered that, whenever enraged at their treatment, instead of spending his breath in vain reproaches, or taking to the more violent proceeding of fisty-cuffs, Jack revenged himself by eating most outrageously, so that the scoffers, deprived of their shares, often found their stomachs minus.  His power of mastication increased with his anger; and the flaming energy that was mentally inciting him to give an enemy a fierce facer, or a destructive cross-buttock, was diverted from his knuckles to his teeth; and in every mouthful which he ground in his relentless mill, he felt the glowing satisfaction of having annihilated a foe.  Woe to those who were his next neighbours at table, and sat too close to his elbows at those hours of excitement; sly punches in the ribs, as if by accident, were among the slightest consequences; and those who were thus taught manners, to keep at a respectful distance, declared that the fear they entertained was only of his knife.  That, it is true, was saying too much; Jack had no such bloody propensities, although the glare of his unequal eyes was enough, when much annoyed, to frighten them into such conclusions.  Although a most unseemly clown, his worst enemies would confess that, unprovoked, he was a very harmless man.  Squire Graspacre knew his value as a faithful and industrious servant, and therefore disregarded the constant tattle about his repulsive peculiarities.

Before methodism spread its puritanic gloom over Wales, and identified itself almost with the Welsh character, mirth and minstrelsy, dance and song, emulative games and rural pastimes, were the order of the day; and, as the country people worked hard all the week, it must be confessed that these sports often infringed upon the sanctity of the sabbath.  Sundays were often entirely spent in dancing, wrestling, and kicking the foot-ball.  The latter violent exercise, at this time prevalent in Cardiganshire, was performed in large parties of village against village, and parish against parish, when the country brought together its mass of population either to partake in the glories of the game, or to enjoy the success of their friends, as spectators.  On these occasions Carmarthen Jack loved to be present, but only as a spectator, as he was never known to take a part in any game.  While others were panting with the rough exercise, swearing at disappointments, hallooing their triumph, or wincing over a broken shin, Jack would be found seated on some rising tump that overlooked the field, busily employed with a scooping knife, hollowing out the bowls of spoons and ladles, or shaping out soles for wooden shoes, which at every moment that he could call his own, he manufactured out of the logs of birch, or more frequently alder, with which he amply provided himself during the week, and stored under his bed to dry.  At fairs also, Carmarthen Jack would be equally punctual, and after having done his master’s business of buying or selling a horse or so, would be seen with a load of the merchandize of his own manufacture, wooden spoons, ladles, and clog soles, in abundance, which drew about him all the rural housekeepers far and near.  “No milliner could suit her customers with gloves” in greater variety than Jack with spoons to please his purchasers.  He had spoons for man, woman, and child, fashioned for every sort of mouth, from the tiny infant’s to the shark-jaws of the hungry ploughman, which, like his own, presented a gap from ear to ear.  He had spoons for use, and spoons for ornament, the latter, meant to keep company with the showy polished pewter, were made of box or yew, highly polished and curiously carved with divers characters, principally suns, moons, stars, hearts transfixt with the dart of cupid, and sometimes a hen and chickens, which hieroglyphics of his own for fear of their being mistaken for a cat and mice, with other such misconstructions, Jack always explained at the time of bargaining, without any extra charge.  Nothing could more emphatically prove the excellency of Jack’s wares, than the circumstance of his being personally unpopular among the women, and yet his wares in the highest esteem.  The frowns of the fair, which threw a gloom on the sunshine of his days, may be traced to a source not at all dishonorable to him.  The girls at the squire’s had played him so many tricks, that once, in the height of aggravation, Jack declared war against the whole sex, devoting to the infernal gods every creature that wore a petticoat, and vowing, from that day forward, that not one of the proscribed race should ever enter his room, which was romantically situated over the stable, with its glassless window commanding a full view of both the pigsty and dunghill.  The consequence of this terrific vow caused him, at first, some trouble, as, to keep it he was obliged thenceforward to be his own chambermaid, lawndress, and sempstress, offices that accorded ill with his previous habits.  The laudable firmness of his nature, however, soon overcame these petty difficulties; and so far was he from backsliding from his previous determination, that he vowed to throw through the window the first woman who entered his chamber, which the satirical hussies called his den—a threat which effectually secured him from further intrusion.  Sometimes, indeed, when he would be sitting at the door of the cowhouse, or the stable, listening to the rural sounds of cackling geese and grunting pigs, while darning his hose or patching his leather breeches, or treading his shirt in the brook by way of washing it, these eternal plagues of his, the girls, would be seen and heard behind the covert of a wall or hedge, smothering their tittering, which at last would burst out, in spite of