"Poor people now are not half so polite as they used to be when I was young. They call each other Mess. instead of Maît., and they style their superiors Maît. when they ought to say Mess.
"The insolent rogues, they only have a smooth tongue when they come to beg. People may say what they like, foolish men may talk about the State establishing scholarships, for the talented poor; let them work. I have worked all my life, and hard too, and here I am, better than any of them."
"Educate them with the States' revenue. Indeed! Bring them up like gentlemen, for them to laugh at you later on, to look down upon you as if you were so much stubble."
"That's what they like. Give young people a few pence to rattle in their trousers' pockets, a collar, cuffs, a sixpenny signet ring on the little finger, a nickel-silver mounted cane and a pair of gloves, and there they go, not caring a fillip whether their parents have toiled and struggled to rise to their present position, ignoring the necessity of thrift, a happy-go-lucky generation. And then, at the end of it all, a deep chasm, into which they will all fall headlong; an immense pyre that will consume all their vanities and profligacies."
"They deserve to be burnt, indeed they do, uncle."
"Someone was even talking of establishing a public library here. Well let them complete the ruin. It is as well. I hope to be dead by that time though. Life, then, will be intolerable. I hope to sleep with those worthy champions of labour--my ancestors--in the churchyard yonder.
"Books!--what do they want books for? I never yet knew a man who read books that was worth a farthing.
"I knew one once who was versed in book-lore, but, worse luck to him, he could not bind a wheat-sheaf or weed a perch of parsnips, and the result--bankruptcy; failure. That's what it comes to.
"Books!--do they want to make schoolmasters of us all, or do they wish us to be always reading our eyes out instead of attending to our business?
"Books!--they are only good for idle loafers; they offer an excuse for shunning one's duty. 'I want to read a bit,' they say when told to do something. 'Oh, let me just finish this page, it is so interesting,' they plead, when asked to quickly fetch some article. This is what Adèle used to do, but I nipped this slothful tendency in the bud. I would have none of it."