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"(The town of) Raveloe lay low among the bushy trees and the rutted lanes, aloof from the currents of industrial energy and Puritan earnestness: the rich ate and drank freely, accepting gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously in respectable families, and the poor thought that the rich were entirely in the right to lead a jolly life...."

What this town needed was a low-fat diet (for the rich) and a a little social unrest (for the poor).