Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/134

 things over. So far, we only know you in church—nor will I deny that we've several times liked what we heard there—but we always think we would like to get nearer to you than that; we country folk are an inquisitive set, we like to get to know our ministers well, so that we may go to them freely with all our difficulties and whatever we have on our minds. We peasants who labour in the same round day in and day out—we badly need some one among us who can give us information and teaching about things you can't exactly speak of from the pulpit. But that's what our good priests never really understand, and that's why we're often on such bad terms.

"See here now, for example, we've a sort of Meeting House, as we call it, in Skibberup. I daresay you've heard about it, sir, and know what sort of a 'den of iniquity' it is; for that's what the Provst calls it. But for all that, we don't do anything but meet in a friendly way, and talk over whatever we like, or we read aloud various books, either religious ones, or the "Readings for the People," as we call them. We think it must be just as good a pastime listening to good words as to lie snoozing on the benches all the winter evenings, or to spend time in gambling, and other dissipations—the custom in the good old days that the Provst talks so much about. It's easy to see that what we peasant folk can have to talk to each other about, can't be much to the purpose; no, if