Very Ignorant People
Charles Spurgeon · John Ploughman's Talk; or, Plain Advice for Plain People
"The fox admires the cheese, not the raven." — Page 229.
I HAVE heard tell of a man who did
not know a great A from a bull's foot,
and I know a good many who certainly
could not tell what great A or little A
(221)
222 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S TALK.
either may mean ; but some of these peo-
ple are not the most ignorant in the world
for all that. For instance, they know a
cow's head from its tail, and one of the
election gentlemen said lately that the can-
didate from London did not know that.
They know that turnips don't grow on trees,
and they can tell a mangold-wurtzel from a
beet root, and a rabbit from a hare, and
there are fine folk who play on pianos who
hardly know as much as that. If they can-
not read they can plough, and mow, and
reap, and sow, and bring up seven children
on ten shillings a-week, and yet pay their
wray ; and there's a sight of people who are
much too ignorant to do that. Ignorance
of spelling books is very bad, but ignorance
of hard work is worse. Wisdom does not
always speak Latin. People laugh at
smock-frocks, and indeed they are about as
ugly garments as could well be contrived,
but some who wear them are not half such
fools as people take them for. If no igno-
rant people ate bread but those who wear
hobnail shoes, corn would be a fine deal
cheaper. Wisdom in a poor man is like a
diamond set in lead, for none but good
VERY IGNORANT PEOPLE. 223
judges can discover its value. Wisdom
walks often in patched clothes, and then
folks do not admire her; but I say, never
mind the coat, give me the man : shells are
nothing, the kernel is everything. You
need not go to Pirbright to find ignoram-
uses, there are heaps of them near St. Paul's.
I would have everybody able to read,
and write, and cipher; indeed, I don't think
a man can know too much ; but mark you,
the knowing of these things is not educa-
tion ; and there are millions of your read-
ing and writing people who are as ignorant
as neighbor Norton's calf, that did not
know its own mother. This is as plain as the
nose on your face, if you only think a little.
To know how to read and write is like
having tools to work, but if you don't use
these tools, and your eyes, and your ears
too, you will be none the better off. Every-
body should know what most concerns him
and makes him most useful. If cats can
catch mice and hens can lay eggs, they
know the things which most suits what they
wrere made for. It is little use for a horse
to know how to fly, it will do well enough
if it can trot. A man on a farm ought to
224 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S TALK.
learn all that belongs to farming, a black-
smith should study a horse's foot, a dairy-
maid should be well up in skimming the
milk and making the butter, and a laborer's
wife should be a good scholar in the
sciences of boiling and baking, washing
and mending; and John Ploughman ven-
tures to say that those men and women
who have not learned the duties of their
callings are very ignorant people, even if
they can tell the Greek name for a croco-
dile, or write a poem on a black beetle. It
is too often very true —
* Jack has been to school
To learn to be a fool."
When a man falls into the water, to know
how to swim will be of more use to him
than all his mathematics, and yet how very
few boys learn swimming ! Girls are taught
dancing and French when stitching and
English would be a hundred per cent, more
use to them. When men have to earn
their livings, in these hard times, a good
trade and industrious habits will serve their
turn a world better than all the classics in
VERY IGNORANT PEOPLE. 225
Cambridge and Oxford : but who nowadays
advocates practical training at our schools ?
Schoolmasters would go into fits if they
were asked to teach poor people's boys to
hoe potatoes and plant cauliflowers, and
yet school boards would be doing a power
of good if they did something of the sort.
If you want a dog to be a pointer or a set-
ter, you train him accordingly : why ever
don't they do the same with men ? It
ought to be " every man for his business,
and every man master of his business." Let
Jack and Tom learn geography by all
means, but don't forget to teach them how
to black their own boots, and put a button
onto their own trousers ; and as for Jane and
Sally, let them sing and play the music if
they like, but not till they can darn a stock-
ing and make a shirt. When they mend
up that Education Act I hope they will put
in a clause to teach children practical com-
mon-sense home duties as well as the three
R's. But there, what's the use of talking
this way, for if children are to learn com-
mon sense where are we to get the teachers ?
Very few people have any of it to spare,
and those who have are never likely to take
*5
226 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S TALK.
to school keeping. Lots of girls learn
nothing except the folderols which I think
they call " accomplishments." There's
poor Gent with six girls, and about fifty
pounds a-year to keep his family on, and
yet not one of them can do a hand's turn,
because their mother would go into fits lest
Miss Sophia Elfrida should have chapped
hands through washing the family linen, or
lest Alexandra Theodora should spoil her
complexion in picking a few gooseberries
for a pudding. It's enough to make a cat
laugh to hear the poor things talk about
fashion and etiquette, when they are not
half as well off as the higgler's daughters
down the lane, who earn their own living,
and are laying money by against the time
when some young farmer will pick them up.
Trust me, he who marries these highty-
tighty young ladies will have as bad a bar-
gain as if he married a wax doll. How the
fat would be in the fire if Mrs. Gent heard
me say it, but I do say it for all that, — she
and her girls are ignorant, very ignorant, be-
cause they do not know what would be of
most service to them.
Every spratciowadays calls itself a herring :
VERY IGNORANT PEOPLE. 227
every donkey thinks itself fit to be one of
the queen's horses ; every candle reckons
itself the sun. But when a man with his
best coat on, and a paper collar, a glass in
his eye, a brass chain on his waistcoat, a
cane in his hand, and emptiness in his head,
fancies that people cannot see through his
swaggers and brags, he must be ignorant,
very ignorant, for he does not know him-
self. Flats, dressed up to the top of the
fashion, think themselves somebodies, but
nobody else does. Dancing masters and
tailors may rig up a fop, but they cannot
make a nothing into a man. You may color a
millstone as much as you like, but you can-
not improve it into a cheese.
Round our part we have a lot of poets,
at least a set of very ignorant people who
think they are; and these folks worry me
more than a little because I have written a
book, and therefore ought to listen to their
rigmaroles. Nonsense is nonsense whether
it rhymes or not, just as bad halfpennies
are good for nothing whether they jingle or
lie quiet. " Here, John," said a man to me,
" I want to read you some of my verses."
" No, thank you," said I, " I don't feel in a
228 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S TALK.
poetical frame of mind to-day." Mark you,
I shan't feel a bit more so to-morrow.
What right has that fellow to shoot his
rubbish at my door ? I have enough of my
own. I don't intend to have my ear stuffed
up with cobbler's wax or cobbled verses.
I had a double dose the other morning from
two of our great village poets, and I must
confess it was rather better than most of the
rhymes that I meet with in books. Chub-
bins said,
" It is a sin to steal a pin,"
And then Padley topped it up by adding,
" It is a greater to steal a tater."
Now, there's rhyme and reason for you, as
the sexton said when he wrote three lines
for the poor man's tombstone:
" Here I lie,
Killed by a sky-
Rocket in my eye."
When tradesmen put their earnings into
companies and expect to see it again ; when
they lend money at outrageous interest and
think to make their fortunes by it, they must
be ignorant, very ignorant. As well hang a
VERY IGNORANT PEOPLE. 229
wooden kettle over the fire to boil the
water for tea, or sow beans in a river and
look for a fine crop.
When men believe in lawyers and money-
lenders (whether Jews or Gentiles), and bor-
row money, and speculate, and think them-
selves lucky fellows, they are shamefully
ignorant. The very gander on the com-
mon would not make such a stupid of him-
self, for he knows when anyone tries to
pluck him, and won't lose his feathers and
pride himself in the operation.
The man who spends his money with
the publican, and thinks that the landlord's
bows and " How do ye do, my good fellow ? "
mean true respect, is a perfect natural ; for
with them it is —
If you have money, take a seat ;
If you have none, take to your f
feet.
The fox admires the cheese ; if it were not
for that he would not care a rap for the
raven. The bait is not put in to the trap to
feed the mouse, but to catch him. We
don't light a fire for the herring's comfort,
but to roast him for our own eating. Men
do not keep pot-houses for the laborer's
230 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S TALK.
good ; if they do, they certainly miss their
aim. Why, then, should people drink " for
the good of the house " ? If I spend
money for the good of any house let it be
my own and not the landlord's. It's a bad
well into which you must put water; and
the beerhouse is a bad friend, because it
takes your all, and leaves you nothing but
heeltaps and headaches. He who calls
those his friends who let him sit and drink
by the hour together, is ignorant, very ig-
norant. Why, Red Lions, and Tigers, and
Eagles, and Vultures, are all creatures of
prey, and none but fools put themselves
within the power of their jaws and talons.
He who believes that either Whigs or
Tories will let us off with light taxes must
have been born on the day after the last of
March; and he who imagines that parish
boards and vestries will ever be free from
jobbery must have been educated in an
idiot asylum. He who believes in promises
made at elections has long ears, and may
try to eat thistles. Mr. Plausible has been
around asking all the workingmen for their
votes, and he will do all sorts of good
things for them. Will he ? Yes, the day
VERY IGNORANT PEOPLE. 231
after to-morrow — a little later than never.
Poor men who expect the " friends of the
workingman " to do anything for them,
must be ignorant, very ignorant. When
they get their seats, of course they cannot
stand up for their principles except when it
is to their own interest to do so.
To lend umbrellas and look to have them
sent home, to do a man a good turn and
expect another from him when you want
it, to dream of stopping some women's
tongues, to try to please everybody, to hope
to hear gossips speak well of you, or to
reckon upon getting the truth of a story
from common report, are all evidences of
great ignorance. Those who know the
world best trust it least : those who trust it
at all are not wise ; as well trust a horse's
heel or a dog's tooth ! Trusting to others
ruins many. He who leaves his business to
bailiffs and servants, and believes it will be
well done, must be ignorant, very ignorant.
The mouse knows when the cat is out of
the house, and servants know when the
master is away. No sooner is the eye of
the master gone than the hand of the work-
man slackens ; at least, it is so nine times
232 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S TALK.
out of ten. " I'll go myself," and " I'll see
to it," are two good servants on a farm.
Those who lie in bed, and bolster themselves
up with the notion that their trade will carry-
on itself, are ignorant, very ignorant.
Such as drink and live riotously, and won-
der why their faces are so blotchy and their
pockets so bare, would leave off wondering
if they had two grains of wisdom. Those
who go to the public-house for happiness
climb a tree to find fish. We might put all
their wit in an eggshell, or they would
never be such dupes as to hunt after com-
fort where it is no more to be found than a
cow in a crow's nest ; but, alas ! good-for-
nothings are common as mice in a wheat-
rick. I only wish we could pack them off
to Lubberland, where they have half-a-
croWn a day for sleeping. If some one
could let loose fellows see the sure result of
ill-living, perhaps they might reform ; and
yet I don't know, for they do see it, and yet
go on all the same ; like a moth that burns
its wings in the flame and yet dashes into
the candle again. Certainly for loitering
lushingtons to expect to thrive by keeping
their hands in their pockets, or their noses
VER Y IGNORANT PEOPLE. 233
in pewter pots, proves them to be ignorant,
very ignorant.
When I see a young lady with a flower
garden on her roof, and a draper's shop on
her body, tossing her head about as if she
thought everybody was charmed with her,
I am sure she must be ignorant, very ig-
norant. Sensible men don't marry a ward-
robe or a bonnet-box ; they want a woman
of sense, and women of that kind always
dress sensibly, and not gaudily.
To my mind, those who sneer at religion,
and set themselves up to be too knowing to
believe in the Bible, are shallow fellows.
They generally use big wTords, and bluster
a great deal, but if they fancy they can
overturn the faith of thinking people, who
have tried and proved the power of the
grace of God, they must be ignorant, very
ignorant. He who looks at the sunrise and
the sunset, and does not see the footprints
of God, must be inwardly blinder than a
mole, and only fit to live underground.
God seems to talk to me in every primrose
and daisy, to smile upon me from every star,
to whisper to me in every breath of morn-
ing air, and to call aloud to me in every
234 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S TALK.
storm. It is strange that so many educated
gentlemen see God nowhere, while John the
ploughman feels him everywhere. John
has no wish to change places, for the sense
of God's presence is his comfort and joy.
They say that man is the god of the dog :
those men must be worse than dogs who
will not listen to the voice of God, for a
dog obeys its master's whistle. They call
themselves " philosophers," don't they?
Their proper name is fools, for the fool hath
said in his heart, " There is no God." The
sheep know when rain is coming, the swal-
lows foresee the winter, and even the pigs,
they say, can see the wind; how much
worse than a brute must he be who lives
where God is everywhere present, and yet
sees him not ! Thus it is very clear that a
man may be a great hand at learning and
yet be ignorant, very ignorant.
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