title: THE GOMMOCK: EXPLOITS OF A CORNISH FOOL
author: Marie  S. Jackman
description: Marie S. Jackman was born in Adelaide in 1929, a fi fth-generation child of Australian pioneers. She began a peripatetic life at the age of 12 as a Second World War camp follower. With her husband, Lloyd, and sometimes her sons, she has lived in England, Australia, Germany, and the USA. She received her B.A. in English at the Pennsylvania State University, taught in the composition program there, and began researching this novel. Her short story, Hour of the Black Widow, appeared in The Canberra Times in 1975.
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  # Town Versus Country
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Mary Russell Mitford
  
  
  This page formatted 2007 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com
  
      
  
  Produced by David Widger
  
  
  TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY.
  
  
  By Mary Russell Mitford
  
  
  “I'm desperately afear'd, Sue, that that brother of thine will turn
  
  
  out a jackanapes,” was the apostrophe of the good yeoman Michael Howe,
  
  
  to his pretty daughter Susan, as they were walking one fine afternoon
  
  
  in harvest through some narrow and richly wooded lanes, which wound
  
  
  between the crofts of his farm of Rutherford West, situate in that
  
  
  out-of-the-way part of Berkshire which is emphatically called “the Low
  
  
  Country,” for no better reason that I can discover than that it is the
  
  
  very hilliest part of the royal county. “I'm sadly afear'd, Sue, that
  
  
  he'll turn out a jackanapes!”—and the stout farmer brandished the tall
  
  
  paddle which served him at once as a walking stick and a weeding-hook,
  
  
  and began vigoro