Explore "False Evidence" by E. Phillips Oppenheim on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Imagine a long, bare-looking apartment with white-washed walls and generally cheerless appearance, in one corner of which had been pushed aside black boards, piles of maps, and other evidences of the school-room. Seated on benches which reached to the entrance door was a very fair sprinkling of the Porlock labourers and tradespeople, whose healthy red faces were shining with soap and expectation, and whose whole appearance denoted a lively and creditable desire to be enlightened on the very important subject which they had come to hear discussed. If any one was interested in the land question surely they were, for they all lived either upon it or by it, except a few whose nautical garb betrayed another occupation, and whose presence was the subject of a great dead of good-humoured chaff before the proceedings opened.
"Eh, Bill," cried one of the land toilers whom I knew well, for he worked at Farmer Smith's up at Bossington, "what dost want know about t'land, eh? This'll noa teach thee to catch fishes."