feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_5_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 6
feat_summary_id: chapter 6
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-6", "summary": "Now that he's poor, Gabriel Oak needs to walk to the nearby town of Casterbridge to attend a job fair. Yup, they had things like that back around 1874. And Oak is looking for any work he can get his hands on. He's been hardened by misfortune and doesn't think that he's too good for anything. Things don't go that well, though. After an unsuccessful morning, Oak wishes he'd gone away with some army recruits who were around a few hours earlier. No one wants to hire him to do farmwork because he's been financially ruined. He wears the scarlet \"u\" for \"unemployable.\" When the day is over, Oak is still unemployed. He hears that there'll be another fair in the nearby town of Weatherbury the next day, and he heads for that town on foot. Oh, and Oak knows that Weatherbury is the place that Bathsheba moved to. Bonus. He takes a nap in a hay wagon and later wakes up to find the wagon moving. He's been asleep for two hours and has no clue how far he's travelled. He can hear two men in the front of the wagon talking rudely about a pretty young lady who lives in their town. Oak wonders for a moment if the lady might be Bathsheba. When he finally hops off the wagon, he sees a chaotic scene on a nearby farm. There's a huge fire burning up the crops and threatening to torch the buildings, too. He jumps into action and succeeds in leading the townspeople's attempts to put the fire out. Oak: 1. Fire: 0. Everyone is impressed with his heroism. Oak wants to ride the wave of this sudden celebrity by asking the farmer owner if there's a need for a shepherd with mad shepherding skills. When the owner rides up, he sees that it's none other than Bathsheba. Seeing him makes her go temporarily mute with surprise. So Oak takes advantage of this by asking whether she needs a shepherd.", "analysis": ""}
text: 
  
  THE FAIR--THE JOURNEY--THE FIRE
  
  
  Two months passed away.  We are brought on to a day in February, on
  which was held the yearly statute or hiring fair in the county-town
  of Casterbridge.
  
  At one end of the street stood from two to three hundred blithe and
  hearty labourers waiting upon Chance--all men of the stamp to whom
  labour suggests nothing worse than a wrestle with gravitation, and
  pleasure nothing better than a renunciation of the same. Among
  these, carters and waggoners were distinguished by having a piece
  of whip-cord twisted round their hats; thatchers wore a fragment of
  woven straw; shepherds held their sheep-crooks in their hands; and
  thus the situation required was known to the hirers at a glance.
  
  In the crowd was an athletic young fellow of somewhat superior
  appearance to the rest--in fact, his superiority was marked enough to
  lead several ruddy peasants standing by to speak to him inquiringly,
  as to a farmer, and to use "Sir" as a finishing word.  His answer
  always was,--
  
  "I am looking for a place myself--a bailiff's.  Do ye know of anybody
  who wants one?"
  
  Gabriel was paler now.  His eyes were more meditative, and his
  expression was more sad.  He had passed through an ordeal of
  wretchedness which had given him more than it had taken away.  He
  had sunk from his modest elevation as pastoral king into the very
  slime-pits of Siddim; but there was left to him a dignified calm he
  had never before known, and that indifference to fate which, though
  it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when
  it does not.  And thus the abasement had been exaltation, and the
  loss gain.
  
  In the morning a regiment of cavalry had left the town, and a
  sergeant and his party had been beating up for recruits through the
  four streets.  As the end of the day drew on, and he found himself
  not hired, Gabriel almost wished that he had joined them, and gone
  off to serve his country.  Weary of standing in the market-place, and
  not much minding the kind of work he turned his hand to, he decided
  to offer himself in some other capacity than that of bailiff.
  
  All the farmers seemed to be wanting shepherds.  Sheep-tending was
  Gabriel's speciality.  Turning down an obscure street and entering
  an obscurer lane, he went up to a smith's shop.
  
  "How long would it take you to make a shepherd's crook?"
  
  "Twenty minutes."
  
  "How much?"
  
  "Two shillings."
  
  He sat on a bench and the crook was made, a stem being given him into
  the bargain.
  
  He then went to a ready-made clothes' shop, the owner of which had a
  large rural connection.  As the crook had absorbed most of Gabriel's
  money, he attempted, and carried out, an exchange of his overcoat for
  a shepherd's regulation smock-frock.
  
  This transaction having been completed, he again hurried off to the
  centre of the town, and stood on the kerb of the pavement, as a
  shepherd, crook in hand.
  
  Now that Oak had turned himself into a shepherd, it seemed that
  bailiffs were most in demand.  However, two or three farmers noticed
  him and drew near.  Dialogues followed, more or less in the subjoined
  form:--
  
  "Where do you come from?"
  
  "Norcombe."
  
  "That's a long way.
  
  "Fifteen miles."
  
  "Who's farm were you upon last?"
  
  "My own."
  
  This reply invariably operated like a rumour of cholera. The
  inquiring farmer would edge away and shake his head dubiously.
  Gabriel, like his dog, was too good to be trustworthy, and he never
  made advance beyond this point.
  
  It is safer to accept any chance that offers itself, and extemporize
  a procedure to fit it, than to get a good plan matured, and wait for
  a chance of using it.  Gabriel wished he had not nailed up his
  colours as a shepherd, but had laid himself out for anything in the
  whole cycle of labour that was required in the fair.  It grew dusk.
  Some merry men were whistling and singing by the corn-exchange.
  Gabriel's hand, which had lain for some time idle in his smock-frock
  pocket, touched his flute which he carried there.  Here was an
  opportunity for putting his dearly bought wisdom into practice.
  
  He drew out his flute and began to play "Jockey to the Fair" in the
  style of a man who had never known moment's sorrow.  Oak could pipe
  with Arcadian sweetness, and the sound of the well-known notes
  cheered his own heart as well as those of the loungers.  He played on
  with spirit, and in half an hour had earned in pence what was a small
  fortune to a destitute man.
  
  By making inquiries he learnt that there was another fair at
  Shottsford the next day.
  
  "How far is Shottsford?"
  
  "Ten miles t'other side of Weatherbury."
  
  Weatherbury!  It was where Bathsheba had gone two months before.
  This information was like coming from night into noon.
  
  "How far is it to Weatherbury?"
  
  "Five or six miles."
  
  Bathsheba had probably left Weatherbury long before this time, but
  the place had enough interest attaching to it to lead Oak to choose
  Shottsford fair as his next field of inquiry, because it lay in the
  Weatherbury quarter.  Moreover, the Weatherbury folk were by no means
  uninteresting intrinsically.  If report spoke truly they were as
  hardy, merry, thriving, wicked a set as any in the whole county.  Oak
  resolved to sleep at Weatherbury that night on his way to Shottsford,
  and struck out at once into the high road which had been recommended
  as the direct route to the village in question.
  
  The road stretched through water-meadows traversed by little brooks,
  whose quivering surfaces were braided along their centres, and
  folded into creases at the sides; or, where the flow was more
  rapid, the stream was pied with spots of white froth, which rode
  on in undisturbed serenity.  On the higher levels the dead and
  dry carcasses of leaves tapped the ground as they bowled along
  helter-skelter upon the shoulders of the wind, and little birds in
  the hedges were rustling their feathers and tucking themselves in
  comfortably for the night, retaining their places if Oak kept moving,
  but flying away if he stopped to look at them.  He passed by Yalbury
  Wood where the game-birds were rising to their roosts, and heard the
  crack-voiced cock-pheasants "cu-uck, cuck," and the wheezy whistle of
  the hens.
  
  By the time he had walked three or four miles every shape in the
  landscape had assumed a uniform hue of blackness.  He descended
  Yalbury Hill and could just discern ahead of him a waggon, drawn up
  under a great over-hanging tree by the roadside.
  
  On coming close, he found there were no horses attached to it, the
  spot being apparently quite deserted.  The waggon, from its position,
  seemed to have been left there for the night, for beyond about half
  a truss of hay which was heaped in the bottom, it was quite empty.
  Gabriel sat down on the shafts of the vehicle and considered his
  position.  He calculated that he had walked a very fair proportion of
  the journey; and having been on foot since daybreak, he felt tempted
  to lie down upon the hay in the waggon instead of pushing on to the
  village of Weatherbury, and having to pay for a lodging.
  
  Eating his last slices of bread and ham, and drinking from the bottle
  of cider he had taken the precaution to bring with him, he got into
  the lonely waggon.  Here he spread half of the hay as a bed, and,
  as well as he could in the darkness, pulled the other half over
  him by way of bed-clothes, covering himself entirely, and feeling,
  physically, as comfortable as ever he had been in his life.  Inward
  melancholy it was impossible for a man like Oak, introspective far
  beyond his neighbours, to banish quite, whilst conning the present
  untoward page of his history.  So, thinking of his misfortunes,
  amorous and pastoral, he fell asleep, shepherds enjoying, in common
  with sailors, the privilege of being able to summon the god instead
  of having to wait for him.
  
  On somewhat suddenly awaking, after a sleep of whose length he had no
  idea, Oak found that the waggon was in motion.  He was being carried
  along the road at a rate rather considerable for a vehicle without
  springs, and under circumstances of physical uneasiness, his
  head being dandled up and down on the bed of the waggon like a
  kettledrum-stick.  He then distinguished voices in conversation,
  coming from the forpart of the waggon.  His concern at this dilemma
  (which would have been alarm, had he been a thriving man; but
  misfortune is a fine opiate to personal terror) led him to peer
  cautiously from the hay, and the first sight he beheld was the stars
  above him.  Charles's Wain was getting towards a right angle with
  the Pole star, and Gabriel concluded that it must be about nine
  o'clock--in other words, that he had slept two hours.  This small
  astronomical calculation was made without any positive effort, and
  whilst he was stealthily turning to discover, if possible, into whose
  hands he had fallen.
  
  Two figures were dimly visible in front, sitting with their legs
  outside the waggon, one of whom was driving.  Gabriel soon found that
  this was the waggoner, and it appeared they had come from
  Casterbridge fair, like himself.
  
  A conversation was in progress, which continued thus:--
  
  "Be as 'twill, she's a fine handsome body as far's looks be
  concerned.  But that's only the skin of the woman, and these dandy
  cattle be as proud as a lucifer in their insides."
  
  "Ay--so 'a do seem, Billy Smallbury--so 'a do seem."  This utterance
  was very shaky by nature, and more so by circumstance, the jolting of
  the waggon not being without its effect upon the speaker's larynx.
  It came from the man who held the reins.
  
  "She's a very vain feymell--so 'tis said here and there."
  
  "Ah, now.  If so be 'tis like that, I can't look her in the face.
  Lord, no: not I--heh-heh-heh!  Such a shy man as I be!"
  
  "Yes--she's very vain.  'Tis said that every night at going to bed
  she looks in the glass to put on her night-cap properly."
  
  "And not a married woman.  Oh, the world!"
  
  "And 'a can play the peanner, so 'tis said.  Can play so clever that
  'a can make a psalm tune sound as well as the merriest loose song a
  man can wish for."
  
  "D'ye tell o't!  A happy time for us, and I feel quite a new man!
  And how do she pay?"
  
  "That I don't know, Master Poorgrass."
  
  On hearing these and other similar remarks, a wild thought flashed
  into Gabriel's mind that they might be speaking of Bathsheba.  There
  were, however, no grounds for retaining such a supposition, for the
  waggon, though going in the direction of Weatherbury, might be going
  beyond it, and the woman alluded to seemed to be the mistress of some
  estate.  They were now apparently close upon Weatherbury and not to
  alarm the speakers unnecessarily, Gabriel slipped out of the waggon
  unseen.
  
  He turned to an opening in the hedge, which he found to be a gate,
  and mounting thereon, he sat meditating whether to seek a cheap
  lodging in the village, or to ensure a cheaper one by lying under
  some hay or corn-stack.  The crunching jangle of the waggon died upon
  his ear.  He was about to walk on, when he noticed on his left hand
  an unusual light--appearing about half a mile distant.  Oak watched
  it, and the glow increased.  Something was on fire.
  
  Gabriel again mounted the gate, and, leaping down on the other side
  upon what he found to be ploughed soil, made across the field in the
  exact direction of the fire.  The blaze, enlarging in a double ratio
  by his approach and its own increase, showed him as he drew nearer
  the outlines of ricks beside it, lighted up to great distinctness.  A
  rick-yard was the source of the fire.  His weary face now began to
  be painted over with a rich orange glow, and the whole front of his
  smock-frock and gaiters was covered with a dancing shadow pattern of
  thorn-twigs--the light reaching him through a leafless intervening
  hedge--and the metallic curve of his sheep-crook shone silver-bright
  in the same abounding rays.  He came up to the boundary fence, and
  stood to regain breath.  It seemed as if the spot was unoccupied by
  a living soul.
  
  The fire was issuing from a long straw-stack, which was so far gone
  as to preclude a possibility of saving it.  A rick burns differently
  from a house.  As the wind blows the fire inwards, the portion in
  flames completely disappears like melting sugar, and the outline is
  lost to the eye.  However, a hay or a wheat-rick, well put together,
  will resist combustion for a length of time, if it begins on the
  outside.
  
  This before Gabriel's eyes was a rick of straw, loosely put together,
  and the flames darted into it with lightning swiftness.  It glowed on
  the windward side, rising and falling in intensity, like the coal of
  a cigar.  Then a superincumbent bundle rolled down, with a whisking
  noise; flames elongated, and bent themselves about with a quiet
  roar, but no crackle.  Banks of smoke went off horizontally at the
  back like passing clouds, and behind these burned hidden pyres,
  illuminating the semi-transparent sheet of smoke to a lustrous yellow
  uniformity.  Individual straws in the foreground were consumed in a
  creeping movement of ruddy heat, as if they were knots of red worms,
  and above shone imaginary fiery faces, tongues hanging from lips,
  glaring eyes, and other impish forms, from which at intervals sparks
  flew in clusters like birds from a nest.
  
  Oak suddenly ceased from being a mere spectator by discovering the
  case to be more serious than he had at first imagined.  A scroll
  of smoke blew aside and revealed to him a wheat-rick in startling
  juxtaposition with the decaying one, and behind this a series of
  others, composing the main corn produce of the farm; so that instead
  of the straw-stack standing, as he had imagined comparatively
  isolated, there was a regular connection between it and the remaining
  stacks of the group.
  
  Gabriel leapt over the hedge, and saw that he was not alone.  The
  first man he came to was running about in a great hurry, as if his
  thoughts were several yards in advance of his body, which they could
  never drag on fast enough.
  
  "O, man--fire, fire!  A good master and a bad servant is fire,
  fire!--I mane a bad servant and a good master.  Oh, Mark Clark--come!
  And you, Billy Smallbury--and you, Maryann Money--and you, Jan
  Coggan, and Matthew there!"  Other figures now appeared behind this
  shouting man and among the smoke, and Gabriel found that, far from
  being alone he was in a great company--whose shadows danced merrily
  up and down, timed by the jigging of the flames, and not at all by
  their owners' movements.  The assemblage--belonging to that class of
  society which casts its thoughts into the form of feeling, and its
  feelings into the form of commotion--set to work with a remarkable
  confusion of purpose.
  
  "Stop the draught under the wheat-rick!" cried Gabriel to those
  nearest to him.  The corn stood on stone staddles, and between these,
  tongues of yellow hue from the burning straw licked and darted
  playfully.  If the fire once got UNDER this stack, all would be lost.
  
  "Get a tarpaulin--quick!" said Gabriel.
  
  A rick-cloth was brought, and they hung it like a curtain across the
  channel.  The flames immediately ceased to go under the bottom of the
  corn-stack, and stood up vertical.
  
  "Stand here with a bucket of water and keep the cloth wet." said
  Gabriel again.
  
  The flames, now driven upwards, began to attack the angles of the
  huge roof covering the wheat-stack.
  
  "A ladder," cried Gabriel.
  
  "The ladder was against the straw-rick and is burnt to a cinder,"
  said a spectre-like form in the smoke.
  
  Oak seized the cut ends of the sheaves, as if he were going to engage
  in the operation of "reed-drawing," and digging in his feet, and
  occasionally sticking in the stem of his sheep-crook, he clambered up
  the beetling face.  He at once sat astride the very apex, and began
  with his crook to beat off the fiery fragments which had lodged
  thereon, shouting to the others to get him a bough and a ladder, and
  some water.
  
  Billy Smallbury--one of the men who had been on the waggon--by this
  time had found a ladder, which Mark Clark ascended, holding on beside
  Oak upon the thatch.  The smoke at this corner was stifling, and
  Clark, a nimble fellow, having been handed a bucket of water, bathed
  Oak's face and sprinkled him generally, whilst Gabriel, now with a
  long beech-bough in one hand, in addition to his crook in the other,
  kept sweeping the stack and dislodging all fiery particles.
  
  On the ground the groups of villagers were still occupied in doing
  all they could to keep down the conflagration, which was not much.
  They were all tinged orange, and backed up by shadows of varying
  pattern.  Round the corner of the largest stack, out of the direct
  rays of the fire, stood a pony, bearing a young woman on its back.
  By her side was another woman, on foot.  These two seemed to keep at
  a distance from the fire, that the horse might not become restive.
  
  "He's a shepherd," said the woman on foot.  "Yes--he is. See how his
  crook shines as he beats the rick with it.  And his smock-frock is
  burnt in two holes, I declare!  A fine young shepherd he is too,
  ma'am."
  
  "Whose shepherd is he?" said the equestrian in a clear voice.
  
  "Don't know, ma'am."
  
  "Don't any of the others know?"
  
  "Nobody at all--I've asked 'em.  Quite a stranger, they say."
  
  The young woman on the pony rode out from the shade and looked
  anxiously around.
  
  "Do you think the barn is safe?" she said.
  
  "D'ye think the barn is safe, Jan Coggan?" said the second woman,
  passing on the question to the nearest man in that direction.
  
  "Safe-now--leastwise I think so.  If this rick had gone the barn
  would have followed.  'Tis that bold shepherd up there that have done
  the most good--he sitting on the top o' rick, whizzing his great
  long-arms about like a windmill."
  
  "He does work hard," said the young woman on horseback, looking up at
  Gabriel through her thick woollen veil.  "I wish he was shepherd
  here.  Don't any of you know his name."
  
  "Never heard the man's name in my life, or seed his form afore."
  
  The fire began to get worsted, and Gabriel's elevated position being
  no longer required of him, he made as if to descend.
  
  "Maryann," said the girl on horseback, "go to him as he comes down,
  and say that the farmer wishes to thank him for the great service he
  has done."
  
  Maryann stalked off towards the rick and met Oak at the foot of the
  ladder.  She delivered her message.
  
  "Where is your master the farmer?" asked Gabriel, kindling with the
  idea of getting employment that seemed to strike him now.
  
  "'Tisn't a master; 'tis a mistress, shepherd."
  
  "A woman farmer?"
  
  "Ay, 'a b'lieve, and a rich one too!" said a bystander. "Lately
  'a came here from a distance.  Took on her uncle's farm, who died
  suddenly.  Used to measure his money in half-pint cups.  They say
  now that she've business in every bank in Casterbridge, and thinks
  no more of playing pitch-and-toss sovereign than you and I, do
  pitch-halfpenny--not a bit in the world, shepherd."
  
  "That's she, back there upon the pony," said Maryann; "wi' her face
  a-covered up in that black cloth with holes in it."
  
  Oak, his features smudged, grimy, and undiscoverable from the smoke
  and heat, his smock-frock burnt into holes and dripping with water,
  the ash stem of his sheep-crook charred six inches shorter, advanced
  with the humility stern adversity had thrust upon him up to the
  slight female form in the saddle.  He lifted his hat with respect,
  and not without gallantry: stepping close to her hanging feet he said
  in a hesitating voice,--
  
  "Do you happen to want a shepherd, ma'am?"
  
  She lifted the wool veil tied round her face, and looked all
  astonishment.  Gabriel and his cold-hearted darling, Bathsheba
  Everdene, were face to face.
  
  Bathsheba did not speak, and he mechanically repeated in an abashed
  and sad voice,--
  
  "Do you want a shepherd, ma'am?"
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter 6
target: Now that he's poor, Gabriel Oak needs to walk to the nearby town of Casterbridge to attend a job fair. Yup, they had things like that back around 1874. And Oak is looking for any work he can get his hands on. He's been hardened by misfortune and doesn't think that he's too good for anything. Things don't go that well, though. After an unsuccessful morning, Oak wishes he'd gone away with some army recruits who were around a few hours earlier. No one wants to hire him to do farmwork because he's been financially ruined. He wears the scarlet "u" for "unemployable." When the day is over, Oak is still unemployed. He hears that there'll be another fair in the nearby town of Weatherbury the next day, and he heads for that town on foot. Oh, and Oak knows that Weatherbury is the place that Bathsheba moved to. Bonus. He takes a nap in a hay wagon and later wakes up to find the wagon moving. He's been asleep for two hours and has no clue how far he's travelled. He can hear two men in the front of the wagon talking rudely about a pretty young lady who lives in their town. Oak wonders for a moment if the lady might be Bathsheba. When he finally hops off the wagon, he sees a chaotic scene on a nearby farm. There's a huge fire burning up the crops and threatening to torch the buildings, too. He jumps into action and succeeds in leading the townspeople's attempts to put the fire out. Oak: 1. Fire: 0. Everyone is impressed with his heroism. Oak wants to ride the wave of this sudden celebrity by asking the farmer owner if there's a need for a shepherd with mad shepherding skills. When the owner rides up, he sees that it's none other than Bathsheba. Seeing him makes her go temporarily mute with surprise. So Oak takes advantage of this by asking whether she needs a shepherd.