Page 790 - middlemarch

some stone-pits made a little centre of slow, heavy-shoul-
dered industry.
In the absence of any precise idea as to what railways
were, public opinion in Frick was against them; for the
human mind in that grassy corner had not the proverbi-
al tendency to admire the unknown, holding rather that it
was likely to be against the poor man, and that suspicion
was the only wise attitude with regard to it. Even the rumor
of Reform had not yet excited any millennial expectations
in Frick, there being no definite promise in it, as of gratu-
itous grains to fatten Hiram Ford’s pig, or of a publican at
the ‘Weights and Scales’ who would brew beer for nothing,
or of an offer on the part of the three neighboring farm-
ers to raise wages during winter. And without distinct good
of this kind in its promises, Reform seemed on a footing
with the bragging of pedlers, which was a hint for distrust
to every knowing person. The men of Frick were not ill-fed,
and were less given to fanaticism than to a strong muscular
suspicion; less inclined to believe that they were peculiarly
cared for by heaven, than to regard heaven itself as rather
disposed to take them in— a disposition observable in the
weather.
Thus the mind of Frick was exactly of the sort for Mr.
Solomon Featherstone to work upon, he having more plen-
teous ideas of the same order, with a suspicion of heaven
and earth which was better fed and more entirely at lei-
sure. Solomon was overseer of the roads at that time, and
on his slow-paced cob often took his rounds by Frick to
look at the workmen getting the stones there, pausing with