Pages From A Private Diary Author:H C Beeching Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: . — To-day is the centenary of the vaccination of James Phipps by Jenner, which Gloucester, his birthplace, has been celebrating in so becoming a fashion. " No p... more »rophet is accepted in his own country." A stranger giving himself out as from Gloucester, probably some wag who knew our nervousness, called a few days ago at the village shop, and the excitement in consequence among the well-to-do has been extraordinary. Tom's wife at once issued a placard appealing to all mothers to set a good example by being re- vaccinated. It appeared in the shop window next the new muzzling order, and seems to have got mixed up with it, for the postman carried about the news that in — — village " all the women were to be muzzled and all the dogs vaccinated." Yesterday was fixed for the doctor's attendance, and old Widow - , who is eighty-eight, was the first voluntary victim. This morning I offered my wife and children and slaves. The cook, I am told, ripped up her sleeve with a pair of scissors, and then went off into hysterics ; the ruddy David turned the complementary colour, but remembered the story of the Spartan boy in the " Sixth Standard Reader," and did not scream or struggle. Rumour brings in momentarily fresh stories of heroism. Why did Mr. Austin receive the laurel ? Tom, who thinks that to love Lord Salisbury is a Conservative education, is annoyed when I put the question; but I am convinced it arose from a confusion between Swinford and Swinburne, very natural to one more familiar with scientific than literary distinctions. Our arguments, however, never become really serious, as Tom is not concerned to defend the honour of any poets but those who belong to the county, and these, so far as we know, are only two, Chaucer and the laureate Pye. Chaucer's connection with Don- nington is d...« less