Excerpt from Richard EscottJames Stanier, carpenter and philosopher, of Mil ford village, is supreme there, and rules his neighbours like unto the beneficent tyrant praised by Aristotle. He is a man of sixty or so, grey-haired and some what bent in the shoulders, with a face usually stem and impassive, but capable of expressing every emo tion. His workshop is separated by a garden from the main road of the village, and, as he turns and saws and planes, he studies the world, muses over the working of Fate, and connects in his mind cause with effect. People who come to him for advice stand in the workshop and explain their difficulties, while he goes on with his labour in silence and ap parent disregard, though now and then, at a critical point in the story, he will raise his head, adjust his spectacles, and watch the speaker's face. His rule, as Aristotle recommends, embraces nearly all the matters of life, and village folk take their Opinions on social, political, and religious matters entirely from him. He is strict with the young, and will by no means permit any two people, who may chance for a time to be in love with one another, to marry at once. He is the first, when occasion arises, to offer condolence or congratulation and he stops all quarrels because, when Stanier declares in favour of one side, the whole village does the same, so that the other person is an outcast until he gives in.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.