The Gardiner and the Guinea

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as an English Peasant. Indeed,
the type can only exist in community, so much does it depend on
cooperation and common laws. One must not think primarily of a French
Peasant; any more than of a German Measle. The plural of the word is its
proper form; you cannot have a Peasant till you have a peasantry. The
essence of the Peasant ideal is equality; and you cannot be equal all by
yourself.

Nevertheless, because human nature always craves and half creates the
things necessary to its happiness, there are approximations and
suggestions of the possibility of such a race even here. The nearest
approach I know to the temper of a Peasant in England is that of the
country gardener; not, of course, the great scientific gardener attached
to the great houses; he is a rich man's servant like any other. I mean
the small jobbing gardener who works for two or three moderate-sized
gardens; who works on his own; who sometimes even owns his house; and who
frequently owns his tools. This kind of man has really some of the
characteristics of the true Peasant--especially the characteristics that
people don't like. He has none of that irresponsible mirth which is the
consolation of most poor men in England. The gardener is even disliked
sometimes by the owners of the shrubs and flowers; because (like Micaiah)
he prophesies not good concerning them, but evil. The English gardener is
grim, critical, self-respecting; sometimes even economical. Nor is this
(as the reader's lightning wit will flash back at me) merely because the
English gardener is always a Scotch gardener. The type does exist in pure
South England blood and speech; I have spoken to the type. I was speaking
to the type only the other evening, when a rather odd little incident
occurred.

It was one of those wonderful evenings in which the sky was warm and
radiant while the earth was still comparatively cold and wet. But it is
of the essence of Spring to be unexpected; as in that heroic and hackneyed
line about coming "before the swallow dares." Spring never is Spring
unless it comes too soon. And on a day like that one might pray, without
any profanity, that Spring might come on earth as it was in heaven. The
gardener was gardening. I was not gardening. It is needless to explain
the causes of this difference; it would be to tell the tremendous history
of two souls. It is needless because there is a more immediate
explanation of the case: the gardener and I, if not equal in agreement,
were at least equal in difference. It is quite certain that he would not
have allowed me to touch the garden if I had gone down on my knees to him.
And it is by no means certain that I should have consented to touch the
garden if he