The summer is the labourer's good season. Then he can make money and

enjoy himself. In the summer three or four men will often join together

and leave their native parish for a ramble. They walk off perhaps some

forty or fifty miles, take a job of mowing or harvesting, and after a

change of scenery and associates, return in the later part of the

autumn, full of the things they have seen, and eager to relate them to

the groups at the cross-roads or the alehouse. The winter is under the

best circumstances a hard time for the labourer. It is not altogether

that coals are dear and firewood growing scarcer year by year, but every

condition of his daily life has a harshness about it. In the summer the

warm sunshine cast a glamour over the rude walls, the decaying thatch,

and the ivy-covered window. The blue smoke rose up curling beside the

tall elm-tree. The hedge parting his garden from the road was green and

thick, the garden itself full of trees, and flowers of more or less

beauty. Mud floors are not so bad in the summer; holes in the thatch do

not matter so much; an ill-fitting window-sash gives no concern. But

with the cold blasts and ceaseless rain of winter all this is changed.

The hedge next the road is usually only elder, and this, once the

leaves are off, is the thinnest, most miserable of shelters. The rain

comes through the hole in the thatch (we are speaking of the large class

of poor cottages), the mud floor is damp, and perhaps sticky. If the

floor is of uneven stones, these grow damp and slimy. The cold wind

comes through the ill-fitting sash, and drives with terrible force under

the door. Very often the floor is one step lower than the ground

outside, and consequently there is a constant tendency in rainy weather

for the water to run or soak in. The elm-tree overhead, that appeared so

picturesque in summer, is now a curse, for the great drops fall

perpetually from it upon the thatch and on the pathway in front of the

door. In great storms of wind it sways to and fro, causing no little

alarm, and boughs are sometimes blown off it, and fall upon the

roof-tree. The thatch of the cottage is saturated; the plants and

grasses that almost always grow on it, and the moss, are vividly, rankly

green; till all dripping, soaked, overgrown with weeds, the wretched

place looks not unlike a dunghill. Inside, the draught is only one

degree better than the smoke. These low chimneys, overshadowed with

trees, smoke incessantly, and fill the room with smother. To avoid the

draught, many of the cottages are fitted with wooden screens, which

divide the room, small enough before, into two parts, the outer of

which, towards the door, is a howling wilderness of draught and wet from

under the door; and the inner part close, stuffy, and dim with smoke

driven down the chimney by the shifting wind. Here the family are all

huddled up together close over the embers. Here the cooking is done,

such as it is. Here they sit in the dark, or in such light as is

supplied by the carefully hoarded stock of fuel, till it is time to go

to bed, and that is generally early enough. So rigid is the economy

practised in many of these cottages that a candle is rarely if ever

used. The light of the fire suffices, and they find their beds in the

dark. Even when a labourer has risen in the scale, and has some small

property, the enforced habits of early life cling to him; and I have

frequently found men who were really worth some little money sitting at

eight o'clock on a dark winter's night without a candle or lamp, their

feet close to a few dying embers. The older people especially go to bed

early. Going to some cottages once for a parish paper that had been

circulated for signature, I rapped at the closed door. This was at

half-past seven one evening in November. Again and again I hammered at

the door; at last an old woman put her head out of window, and the

following colloquy ensued:--

"What do 'ee want?"

"The paper; have you signed it?"

"Lor, I doan't know. He's on the table--a bin ther ever since a come.

Thee's can lift th' latch an' take 'un. _We bin gone to bed this two

hours._"

They must have gone upstairs at half-past five. To rise at five of a

summer's morning, and see the azure of the sky and the glorious sun, may

be, perhaps, no great hardship, although there are few persons who could

long remain poetical on bread and cheese. But to rise at five on a dark

winter's morning is a very different affair. To put on coarse nailed

boots, weighing fully seven pounds, gaiters up above the knee, a short

greatcoat of some heavy material, and to step out into the driving rain

and trudge wearily over field after field of wet grass, with the

furrows full of water; then to sit on a three-legged stool, with mud and

manure half-way up the ankles, and milk cows with one's head leaning

against their damp, smoking hides for two hours, with the rain coming

steadily drip, drip, drip--this is a very different affair.

The "fogger" on a snowy morning in the winter has to encounter about the

most unpleasant circumstances imaginable. Icicles hang from the eaves of

the rick, and its thatch is covered with snow. Up the slippery ladder in

the dark morning, one knee out upon the snow-covered thatch, he plunges

the broad hay-knife in and cuts away an enormous truss--then a great

prong is stuck into this, a prong made on purpose, with extra thick and

powerful handle, and the truss, well bound round with a horse-hair rope,

is hoisted on the head and shoulders. This heavy weight the fogger has

to carry perhaps half-a-mile through the snow; the furrows in the field

are frozen over, but his weight crashes through the ice, slush into the

chilly water. Rain, snow, or bitter frost, or still more bitter east

winds--"harsh winds," as he most truly calls them--the fogger must take

no heed of either, for the cows must be fed.

A quart of threepenny ale for breakfast, with a hunch of bread and

cheese, then out to work again in the weather, let it be what it may.

The cowyards have to be cleaned out--if not done before breakfast--the

manure thrown up into heaps, and the heaps wheeled outside. Or, perhaps,

the master has given him a job of piece-work to fill up the middle of

the day with--a hedge to cut and ditch. This means more slush, wet,

cold, and discomfort. About six or half-past he reaches home, thoroughly

saturated, worn-out, cross, and "dummel." I don't know how to spell that

word, nor what its etymology may be, but it well expresses the dumb,

sullen churlishness which such a life as this engenders. For all the

conditions and circumstances of such a life tend to one end only--the

blunting of all the finer feelings, the total erasure of sensitiveness.

The coarse, half-cooked cabbage, the small bit of fat and rafty bacon,

the dry bread and pint of weak tea, makes no very hearty supper after

such a day as this. The man grows insensible to the weather, so cold and

damp; his bodily frame becomes crusted over, case-hardened; and with

this indifference there rises up at the same time a corresponding

dulness as regards all moral and social matters.

Generally the best conditions of cottage life are to be found wherever

there are, say, three or four great, tall, strong, unmarried sons

lodging in the house with their aged parents. Each of these pays a small

sum weekly for his lodging, and often an additional sum for the bare

necessaries of life. In the aggregate this mounts up to a considerable

sum, and whatever is bought is equally shared by the parents. They live

exceedingly well. Such young men as these earn good wages, and now and

then make extra time, and come home with a pocketful of money. Even

after the inevitable alehouse has claimed its share, there still remains

enough to purchase fresh meat for supper; and it is not at all unusual

in such cottages to find the whole family supping at seven (it is, in

fact, dining) on a fairly good joint of mutton, with every species of

common vegetables. In one case that was brought under my notice three

brothers lived with their aged mother. They were all strong,

hard-working men, and tolerably steady. In that cottage there were no

less than four separate barrels of beer, and all on tap. Four barrels in

one cottage seems an extraordinary thing, yet it resolved itself very

simply. The cottage was the mother's; they gave her so much for lodging,

and she had her own barrel of beer, so that there should be no dispute.

The three brothers were mowers--mowers drink enormous quantities of

liquor--and with the same view to prevent dispute each had his own

especial barrel. Families like this live fairly well, and have many

little comforts. Still, at the best, in winter it is a rough and

uncomfortable existence.

In the life of the English agricultural labourers there is absolutely no

poetry, no colour. Even their marriages--times when if ever in life

poetry will manifest itself--are sober, dull, tame, clumsy, and

colourless. I say sober in the sense of tint, for to get drunk appears

to be the one social pleasure of the marriage-day. They, of course, walk

to church; but then that walk usually leads across fields full of all

the beauties of the spring or the summer. There is nothing in the walk

itself to flatten down the occasion. But the procession is so dull--so

utterly ungenial--a stranger might pass it without guessing that a

wedding was toward. Except a few rude jests; except that there is an

attempt to walk arm-in-arm (it is only an attempt, for they forget to

allow for each other's motions); except the Sunday dresses, utterly

devoid of taste, what is there to distinguish this day from the rest?

There is the drunken carousal, it is true, all the afternoon and

evening. There are no fete days in the foreign sense in the English

labourer's life. There are the fairs and feasts, and a fair is the most

melancholy of sights. Showmen's vans, with pictures outside of unknown

monsters; merry-go-rounds, nut stalls, gingerbread stalls, cheap Jacks,

and latterly photographic "studios"; behind all these the alehouse; the

beating of drums and the squalling of pigs, the blowing of horns, and

the neighing of horses trotted out for show, the roar of a rude

crowd--these constitute a country fair. There is no colour--nothing

flowery or poetical about this festival of the labourer.

The village feasts are still less interesting. Here and there the

clergyman of the parish has succeeded in turning what was a rude

saturnalia into a decorous "fete," with tea in a tent. But generally the

feasts are falling into rapid disuse, and would perhaps have died away

altogether had not the benefit societies often chosen that day for their

annual club-dinner. A village feast consists of two or three gipsies

located on the greensward by the side of the road, and displaying

ginger-beer, nuts, and toys for sale; an Aunt Sally; and, if the village

is a large one, the day may be honoured by the presence of what is

called a rifle-gallery; the "feast" really and truly does not exist.

Some two or three of the old-fashioned farmers have the traditional

roast beef and plum-pudding on that day, and invite a few friends; but

this custom is passing away. In what the agricultural labourer's feast

nowadays consists no one can tell. It is an excuse for an extra quart or

two of beer, that is all.

This dulness is not, perhaps, the fault of the labourer. It may be that

it is the fault of the national character, shown more broadly in the

lower class of the population. Speaking nationally, we have no fete

days--there is no colour in our mode of life. These English

agricultural labourers have no passion plays, no peasant plays, no

rustic stage and drama, few songs, very little music. The club dinner is

the real fete of the labourer; he gets plenty to eat and drink for that

day. It is this lack of poetical feeling that makes the English

peasantry so uninteresting a study. They have no appreciation of beauty.

Many of them, it is true, grow quantities of flowers; but barely one in

a thousand could arrange those flowers in a bouquet.

The alehouse forms no inconsiderable part of the labourer's life. It is

at once his stock exchange, his reading-room, his club, and his assembly

rooms. It is here that his benefit society holds its annual dinner. The

club meetings take place weekly or monthly in the great room upstairs.

Here he learns the news of the day; the local papers are always to be

found at the public-house, and if he cannot read himself he hears the

news from those who can. In the winter he finds heat and light, too

often lacking at home; at all times he finds amusement; and who can

blame him for seizing what little pleasure lies in his way? As a rule

the beerhouse is the only place of amusement to which he can resort: it

is his theatre, his music-hall, picture-gallery, and Crystal Palace. The

recent enactments bearing upon the licensed victuallers have been rather

hard upon the agricultural labourer. No doubt they are very excellent

enactments, especially those relating to early closing; but in the

villages and outlying rural districts, where life is reduced to its most

rude and simple form, many of the restrictions are unjust, and deprive

the labourer of what he feels to be his legitimate right. Playing at

nine-pins, for instance, is practically forbidden, so also dominoes.

Now, it was a great thing to put down skittle-sharping and cheating at

gambling generally--a good thing to discourage gambling in every

form--but in these thinly-populated outlying agricultural parishes,

where money is scarce and wages low, there never existed any temptation

to allure skittle-sharpers and similar cheaters to the spot. The game at

skittles was a legitimate game--a fair and honest struggle of skill and

strength. Nine times out of ten it was played only for a quart of ale,

to be drunk by the loser as well as the winner in good fellowship. Why

deprive the man who labours all day in wet and storm of so simple a

pleasure in the evening? The conditions are very different to those

existing in large manufacturing towns, and some modification of the law

ought to be made. The agricultural labourer has no cheap theatre at

which he can spend an hour, no music-hall, no reading-room; his only

resource is the public-house. Now that he is practically deprived of his

skittles and such games, he has no amusement left except to drink, or

play at pitch and toss on the quiet, a far worse pastime than skittles.

Skittles, of course, are allowed provided the players play for love

only; but what public-house keeper cares to put up the necessary

arrangements on such terms? The labourer will have his quart in the

evening, and, despite of all "cry" to the contrary, I believe it to be

his right to have that quart; and it is better, if he must have it, that

his whole thoughts should not be concentrated on the liquor--that he

should earn it by skill and strength. There is an opprobrium about the

public-house, and let us grant that it is at least partially

deserved--but where else is the labourer to go? He cannot for ever work

all day and sit in his narrow cabin in the evening. He cannot always

read, and those of his class who do read do so imperfectly. A

reading-room has been tried, but as a rule it fails to attract the

_purely agricultural labourer_. The shoemaker, the tailor, the village

post-master, grocer, and such people may use it; also a few of the

better-educated of the young labourers, the rising generation; but not

the full-grown labourer with a wife and family and cottage. It does good

undoubtedly; in the future, as education extends, it will become a place

of resort. But at present it fails to reach the adult genuine

agricultural labourer. For a short period in the dead of the winter the

farmers and gentry get up penny readings in many places, but these are

confined to at most one evening a week. What, then, is the labourer to

do? Let any one put himself in his place, try to realise his feelings

and circumstances. At present, till education extends, he must go to the

public-house. Is he to be punished and deprived of his game of skill

because in large towns it bears evil fruit? Surely the law could be

somewhat modified, and playing permitted under some restrictions.

The early closing has been an unalloyed good in these rural districts.

The labourer is a steady drinker. He does not toss down glasses of stiff

brandy and whisky. His beer requires time to produce an effect. The last

hour does the mischief. Since the earlier closing the village streets

have been comparatively free from drunken men. In any case, the

agricultural labourer is the most lamb-like of drunkards. He interferes

with no one. He unhinges no gates, smashes no windows, does no injury.

He either staggers home or quietly lies on the grass till the liquor

passes off. He is not a quarrelsome man. He does not fight with

knuckle-dusters or kick with his heavy boots. His fights, when he does

fight, are very harmless affairs. No doubt his drunkenness is an

offence; but it is comparatively innocuous to the general public.

Religious feeling does not run high among the labourers. A large

proportion of them are Nonconformists--principally Methodists. But this

is not out of any very decided notion as to the difference of ceremony

or theological dogma; it arises out of a class feeling. They say, or

rather they feel, that this is _their_ church. The parish church is the

church of the farmers and the gentry. There is no hostility to the

clergyman of the parish, no bitter warfare of sect against sect, or of

Methodist against Churchman. But you see very few of the farmers go to

chapel. The labourer goes there, and finds his own friends--his cousins

and uncles--his wife's relations. He is among his own class. There is no

feeling of inferiority. The religion taught, the service, the hymns, the

preacher, all are his. He has a sense of proprietorship in them. He

helps to pay for them. The French peasant replied to the English

tourist, who expressed surprise at the fanatic love of the populace for

the first Napoleon--"he was as much a tyrant as King Louis was." "Ah,

but Napoleon was _our_ king." So the labourers feel that this is their

religion. Therefore it is that so many of them gather together (where

there are no chapels) in the cottage of some man who takes the lead, and

sit, with doors and windows shut, crammed together to pray and listen to

others pray. Any of them who wishes can, as it were, ascend the pulpit

here. This is why in so many parishes the pews of the parish church are

comparatively empty so far as agricultural labourers are concerned. The

best of clergymen must fail to fill them under such disadvantages.

It is very difficult not only for the clergyman, but for others who wish

to improve the condition of the labourer, to reach him. Better cottages

are, of course, a most effectual way, but it is not in the power of

every one to confer so substantial a benefit. Perhaps one of the best

means devised has been that of cottage flower-shows. These are, of

course, not confined to flowers; in fact, the principal part of such

shows consists of table vegetables and fruit. By rigidly excluding all

gardeners, and all persons not strictly cottage people, the very best

results have often been arrived at in this way. For if there is one

thing in which the labourer takes an interest it is his garden and his

allotment. To offer him prizes for the finest productions of his garden

touches the most sensitive part of his moral organisation. It is

wonderful what an amount of emulation these prizes excite--emulation not

so much for the value of the prize as for the distinction. These

competitions tend besides to provide him with a better class of food,

for he depends largely upon vegetables.

There is nothing connected with the condition of the agricultural poor

that is better worth the attention of improvers than the style of

cookery pursued in these cottages. A more wretched cookery probably does

not exist on the face of the earth. The soddened cabbage is typical of

the whole thing. Since higher wages have come in it has become possible

for the labourer in many cases to provide himself with better food, such

as mutton--the cheap parts--more bacon, pork, and so on; but the women

do not know how to make the most of it. It is very difficult to lay down

a way in which this defect may be remedied; for there is nothing a man,

let him be never so poor, so deeply resents as an inspection of the

contents of his pot. He would sooner eat half-raw bacon than have the

teaching forced on him--how to make savoury meals of the simple

provisions within his reach; nor can he be blamed for this sturdy

independent feeling. Possibly the establishment of schools of cookery in

villages might do much good. They might be attached to the new schools

now building throughout the country. The labourer, from so long living

upon coarse, ill-cooked food, acquires an artificial taste. Some men eat

their bacon raw; others will drink large quantities of vinegar, and well

they may need it to correct by its acidity the effects of strong

unwholesome cabbage. The cottage cook has no idea of those nutritious

and pleasant soups which can be made to form so important a feature in

the economy of daily life.

The labourer is in a lower degree of the same class as the third-rate

working farmer of the past. He is the old small dairy farmer in a

coarser shape. With a little less education, ruder manners, with the

instincts of eating, drinking, and avarice more prominently displayed,

he presents in his actual condition at this day a striking analogy to

the agriculturist of a bygone time. In fact, those farmers of twenty or

thirty acres, living in cottage-like homesteads, were barely

distinguishable as far as _personnel_ went from the labourers among whom

they lived. This being the case, it is not surprising to find that the

labourer of this day presents in general characteristics a marked

affinity in ideas and sentiments to those entertained by the old

farmer. He has the same paternal creed in a more primeval form. He

considers his children as his absolute property. He rules them with a

rod of iron, or rather of ground-ash. In fact, the ground-ash stick is

his social religion. The agricultural labouring poor are very rough and

even brutal towards their children. Not that they are without affection

towards them, but they are used to thrash them into obedience instead of

leading them into it by the gentle means of moral persuasion.

Bystanders would call the agricultural labourer cruel. Carters, for

instance, had till lately a habit of knocking the boys under their

control about in a brutal manner. But I do not think that in the mass of

cases it arose from deliberate cruelty, but from a species of stolid

indifference or insensibility to suffering. Somehow they do not seem to

understand that others suffer, whether this arises from the rough life

they lead, the endless battle with the weather, the hard fare--whether

it has grown up out of the circumstances surrounding them. The same

unfeeling brutality often extends to the cattle under their care. In

this there has been a decided improvement of late years; but it is not

yet extinct.

These are some of the lights and shades of the labourer's daily life

impartially presented.

_FIELD-FARING WOMEN._

If a thoughtful English peasant-woman rejoiced that in her house a son

was born, it would be, not because "she had gotten a man from the Lord,"

but a thanksgiving that it was not a girl. That most natural

thanksgiving of the Hebrew woman is too rarely heard in the rural

cottage, situated though it may be in the midst of meadows and fields

abounding with the fat of the earth. The fact that a fresh being has

entered upon life, with all its glorious possibilities, is not a subject

for joy.

"Well, John," the farmer says to his man, "your wife has been confined,

hasn't she? How's the young one?"

"Aw, sir, a' be main weak and picked, an' like _to go back_--thank God!"

replies the labourer with intense satisfaction, especially if he has two

or three children already. "Picked" means thin, sharp-featured, wasted,

emaciated. "To go back" is to die. The man does not like to say "die,"

therefore he puts it "to go back"--_i.e._, whence it came; from the

unknown. Yet, with all this hard indifference, the labourer is as fond

of his children as any one else. The "ego" that utters those apparently

heartless words is not the real man, it is the "ego" produced by long

experience of the hardships of poverty; of coarse fare, rude labour,

exposure. After all, it is in a spirit of tenderness towards the infant

that the parent half desires it to die. The real "ego," the true man,

delights as all humanity does in watching the growth of the tiny limbs,

the expansion of the instincts into mind, and the first employment of

that mind. He feels as Marguerite in _Faust_ felt, tending the

babe--"the holiest of all joys." But life is very, very hard, and

circumstances push him out of himself. Still more do these hardships

tell upon his wife; and so it is, knowing what her sex have to go

through, that she welcomes a boy more than a girl. An aged agricultural

woman said she would sooner have seven boys than one girl; for the

former, when they became lads, went out and earned their own living,

but the girls you never knew when they were got rid of--they were always

coming back. This expressed the practical view of the matter. But

supposing that the child should prove a girl; it must not be imagined

that it receives any ruder treatment in mere infancy than a boy would

have had. In early infancy children have no sex. But the poor mother has

her trials. Though in the midst of a country teeming with milk, it is

often with the utmost difficulty that she can obtain any for her babe,

if Nature shall have rendered her dependent upon artificial supply. This

has become especially the case of late years, now that so much milk is

sent to London, instead of being retained in the dairy for the

manufacture of butter and cheese. So that it actually happens that the

poor mother in the courts of the metropolis can obtain milk easier than

her far-away sister in those fabulous fields which the city woman has

never seen, and, perhaps, never will. Often in arable districts there

are scarcely any cows kept. No one cares to retail a pennyworth of milk.

It is only by favour, through the interest taken by some farmer's wife,

that it can be got.

Very few agricultural women have a medical man present at their

confinement; they usually entrust themselves to the care of some village

nurse, who has a reputation for skill in such matters, but no

scientifically acquired knowledge--who proceeds by rule of thumb. The

doctor--almost always the parish doctor, though sometimes the club

officer--is not called in till after the delivery. The poor woman will

frequently come downstairs on the fourth day; and it is to this

disregard of proper precautions that the distortions of figure and many

of the illnesses of poor agricultural women are attributable. Nothing

but the severe training they have gone through from childhood

upwards--the exposure to all kinds of weather--the life in the open air,

the physical strength induced by labour, can enable them to support the

strain upon the frame caused by so quickly endeavouring to resume their

household duties. It is probably this reserve of strength which enables

them to recover from so serious a matter so quickly. Certain it is that

very few die from confinement; and yet, from the point of view of the

middle class of society, almost every precaution and every luxury by

them deemed necessary is omitted. Of course, in some instances,

agricultural women whose husbands have, perhaps, worked for one master

from boyhood, receive much more attention than here indicated--wines,

jellies, meat, and so on--but the majority have to rely upon the tender

mercies of the parish. It has been often remarked that the labourer, let

him be in receipt of what wages he will, makes no provision for this,

the most serious and interesting of all domestic events. Though it can

be foreseen for months, he does not save a single sovereign. He does not

consider it in the least shameful to receive parish relief on these

occasions; he leaves his partner entirely to the mercy of strangers, and

were it not for the clergyman's wife, she would frequently be without

sympathy. There are no matters in which so much practical good is

accomplished by the wives of the rural clergy as in these confinements

of the poor women in their parishes. It is a matter peculiarly within

their sphere, and, to their honour be it spoken, one which they carry

out to the utmost of their ability.

A cottage is at best a wretched place to be ill in. It is a marvel how

many poor women escape at all, from the close atmosphere of the

low-pitched holes in which they are confined. It is a wonder that, among

the many schemes of philanthropy which have attracted attention of late

years, something has not been done for these poor creatures. Why should

not every large village or cluster of villages--there are often three or

four within a mile or two--have their lying-in hospitals, on the cottage

hospital system? Scarcely any parish but has its so-called

charities--money left by misguided but benevolent persons, for the

purpose of annual distribution in small doles of groats, or loaves, or

blankets. Often there is a piece of land called "Poor's Mead," or some

similar name, which has been devised like this, the annual rent from it

to be applied for the poor. As it is, the benefit from these charities

is problematical. If they were combined, and the aggregate funds applied

to maintain a lying-in hospital for the district, a real and efficient

good would be arrived at. But of all places, villages are neglected. Let

it be drainage, water supply, allotments--anything and everything--the

villages go on as they may, the fault being the absence of local

authority. There are plenty of gentlemen ready and willing to take part

in and advance such schemes, but there is no combination. Spontaneous

combination is uncertain in its operation. If there were some system of

village self-government, these wants would be soon supplied. It is true

that there is the Union Workhouse. A poor woman can go to the workhouse;

but is it right, is it desirable from any point of view, that decent

women should be driven to the workhouse at such times? As a matter of

fact, it is only the unfortunates who have illegitimate children that

use the workhouse lying-in wards. Such an institution as has been

suggested would be gladly welcomed by the agricultural poor. Most

cottages have but two bedrooms, some only one; a better class of cottage

is now being gradually erected with three, but even in these the third

is very small. Now, take the case of a labouring man with seven or eight

children, and living in a cottage with two bedrooms, and whose wife is

confined; and let it be remembered that large families are common

amongst this class. The wife must certainly have one room to herself and

her attendant. The father, then, and his children must crowd into the

other, or sleep as they can on the ground-floor. In the case of nearly

grown-up children the overcrowding is a serious matter. The relief

afforded by a lying-in hospital would be immense; and the poor woman

herself would be restored to her family with her health firmly

re-established, whereas now she often lingers in a sickly state for

months.

In the soft, warm summer-time, when the midsummer hum of the myriads of

insects in the air sheds a drowsy harmony over the tree-tops, the

field-faring woman goes out to haymaking, and leaves her baby in the

shade by the hedge-side. A wooden sheepcage, turned upside down and

filled with new-made hay, forms not at all a despicable cradle; and here

the little thing lies on its back and inhales the fresh pure air, and

feels the warmth of the genial sun, cheered from time to time by visits

from its busy mother. Perhaps this is the only true poetry of the

hayfield, so much talked of and praised. The mother works with her rake,

or with a shorter, smaller prong; and if it is a large farm, the women

are kept as much as possible together, for their strength and skill

will not allow them to work at the same pace as the men, and if they

work in company the one hinders the other. A man can do the work of two

women, and do it better in every way, besides being capable of the

heavier tasks of pitching, cock-making, &c., which the women cannot

manage. Before the haymaking machines and horse-rakes came into vogue,

it was not uncommon to see as many as twenty women following each other

in _echelon_, turning a "wallow," or shaking up the green swathes left

by the mowers. Farmers were obliged to employ them, but were never

satisfied with their work, which was the dearest they paid for. Somehow,

there was no finish to it. Large numbers of women still work in the

hayfield, but they are not used in gangs so much as formerly, but

distributed about to do light jobs for which a man cannot be spared, and

in these they are useful. The pay used to be tenpence a day; now it is

one shilling and a pint of beer per day, and in some places

fifteenpence. The Arcadian innocence of the hayfield, sung by the poets,

is the most barefaced fiction; for those times are the rural saturnalia,

and the broadest and coarsest of jokes and insinuations are freely

circulated; nor does it always stop at language only, provided the

master be out of sight. Matrons and young girls alike come in for an

equal share of this rude treatment, and are quite a match for the men in

the force of compliment. The women leave work an hour or so before the

men, except when there is a press, and the farmer is anxious to get in

the hay before a storm comes. It is not that the hayfield itself

originates this coarseness but this is almost the only time of the year

when the labouring classes work together in large numbers. A great deal

of farm-work is comparatively solitary; in harvest droves of people are

collected together, and the inherent vulgarity comes out more strongly.

At the wheat-harvest the women go reaping, and exceedingly hard they

work at it. There is no harder work done under the sun than reaping, if

it is well followed up. From earliest dawn to latest night they swing

the sickles, staying with their husbands, and brothers, and friends,

till the moon silvers the yellow corn. The reason is because reaping is

piece-work, and not paid by the day, so that the longer and the harder

they work the more money is earned. In this a man's whole family can

assist. His wife, his grown-up sons and daughters cut the corn, the

younger ones can carry it and aid in various ways.

It is wonderful how the men stand the excessive and continuous labour;

it is still more wonderful how the women endure it, trying as it is to

the back. It is the hottest season of the year--the early autumn; the

sun burns and scorches, and the warm wind gives no relief; even the

evenings are close and sultry. The heated earth reflects the rays, and

the straw is dry and warm to the touch. The standing corn, nearly as

high as the reaper, keeps off the breeze, if there is any, from her

brow. Grasping the straw continuously cuts and wounds the hand, and even

gloves will hardly give perfect protection. The woman's bare neck is

turned to the colour of tan; her thin muscular arms bronze right up to

the shoulder. Short time is allowed for refreshment; right through the

hottest part of the day they labour. It is remarkable that none, or very

few, cases of sunstroke occur. Cases of vertigo and vomiting are

frequent, but pass off in a few hours. Large quantities of liquor are

taken to sustain the frame weakened by perspiration.

When night does arrive, even then the task is not over, for they have to

carry home on their heads the bundle of wheat gleaned by the smaller

children, and perhaps walk two miles to the cottage. This is indeed work

for a woman still suckling her child. It is not easy to calculate what a

woman earns at such seasons, because they rarely work on their own

account: either the father or the husband receives the wages in a lump

with his own; but it cannot be much less than that earned by a man; for

at these times they work with a will, and they do not at the haymaking.

While reaping the baby is nestled down on a heap of coats or shawls

under the shelter of the shocks of corn, which form a little hut for it,

and, as in the hayfield, is watched by one of the children. Often three

or four women will place their babies close together, and leave one

great girl in charge of the whole, which is an economy, releasing other

children for work; for the hayfield and the corn-harvest are the

labourer's gold-mine. There is not so much rough joking in the

corn-field; they do not work so close together, and the husband or

father is near at hand; neither is there time nor inclination in the

midst of such severe labour, to which haymaking is play.

Harvest-homes are going out of fashion. After one of these feasts there

was often much that was objectionable; and, wherever possible, farmers

have abolished them, giving a small sum of money instead; but in places

the labourers grumble greatly at the change, preferring the bacon and

the beer, and the unrestrained license. It is noticeable how the women

must have their tea. If it is far from home, the children collect

sticks, and a fire is made in a corner of the field, and the kettle

boiled; and about four o'clock they take a cup in company--always weak

tea, with a little brown sugar and no milk, and usually small pieces of

bread sopped in it, especially by the elder women. Tea is largely used

by the agricultural labourers, though it does not by any means prevent

them from indulging in beer. Snuff is not taken by the women half so

much as formerly, though some of the old ones are very fond of it.

As soon as ever the child is old enough to crawl about, it is sure to

get out into the road and roll in the dust. It is a curious fact that

the agricultural children, with every advantage of green fields and wide

open downs, always choose the dusty hard road to play in. They are free

to wander as they list over mead and leaze, and pluck the flowers out of

the hedges, and idle by the brooks, all the year round, the latter part

of the spring, when the grass is nearly fit for mowing, only excepted.

Yet, excepting a few of the elder boys birdnesting, it is the rarest

thing to meet a troop of children in the fields; but there they are in

the road, the younger ones sprawling in the dust, their naked limbs

kicking it up in clouds, and the bigger boys clambering about in the

hedge-mound bounding the road, making gaps, splashing in the dirty water

of the ditches. Hardy young dogs one and all. Their food is of the

rudest and scantiest, chiefly weak tea, without milk, sweetened with

moist sugar, and hunches of dry bread, sometimes with a little lard, or,

for a treat, with treacle. Butter is scarcely ever used in the

agricultural labourer's cottage. It is too dear by far, and if he does

buy fats, he believes in the fats expressed from meats, and prefers lard

or dripping. Children are frequently fed with bread and cheap sugar

spread on it. This is much cheaper than butter. Sometimes they get a bit

of cheese or bacon, but not often, and a good deal of strong cabbage,

soddened with pot-liquor. The elder boys get a little beer; the young

girls none, save perhaps a sip from their mother's pint, in summer. This

is what they have to build up a frame on capable of sustaining heat and

cold, exposure, and a life of endless labour. The boys it seems to suit,

for they are generally tolerably plump, though always very short for

their age. Frequently teams of powerful horses drawing immense loads of

hay or straw may be seen on the highway, in the charge of a boy who does

not look ten years old judged by the town standard, but who is really

fifteen. These short, broad, stout lads, look able to stand anything,

and in point of fact do stand it, from the kick of a carter's heavy boot

to the long and bitter winter. If it is wished to breed up a race of men

literally "hard as nails," no better process could be devised; but,

looked at from a mental and moral point of view, there may be a

difference of opinion.

The girls do not appear to thrive so well upon this dietary. They are as

tall as the boys, taller if anything considering the ages, but thin and

skinny, angular and bony. At seven or eight years old the girl's labour

begins. Before that she has been set to mind the baby, or watch the pot,

and to scour about the hedges for sticks for the fire. Now she has not

only to mind the baby, but to nurse it; she carries it about with her in

her arms; and really the infant looks almost as large as herself, and

its weight compels her to lean backwards. She is left at home all day in

charge of the baby, the younger children, and the cottage. Perhaps a

little bread is left for them to eat, but they get nothing more till the

mother returns about half-past four, when, woe be to the girl if the

fire is not lit, and the kettle on. The girl has to fetch the

water--often a hard and tedious task, for many villages have a most

imperfect supply, and you may see the ditches by the roadside dammed up

to yield a little dirty water. She may have to walk half-a-mile to the

brook, and then carry the bucket home as best she may, and repeat the

operation till sufficient has been acquired; and when her mother is

washing, or, still worse, is a washerwoman by profession, this is her

weary trudge all day. Of course there are villages where water is at

hand, and sometimes too much of it. I know a large village where the

brook runs beside the highway, and you have to pass over a "drock," or

small bridge, to get to each of the cottages; but such instances are

rare. The girl has also to walk into the adjacent town and bring back

the bread, particularly if her mother happens to be receiving parish

pay. A little older--at ten or eleven, or twelve--still more skinny and

bony now as a rule, she follows her mother to the fields, and learns to

pick up stones from the young mowing grass, and place them in heaps to

be carted away to mend drinking places for cattle. She learns to beat

clots and spread them with a small prong; she works in the hayfield, and

gleans at the corn-harvest. Gleaning--poetical gleaning--is the most

unpleasant and uncomfortable of labour, tedious, slow, back-aching work;

picking up ear by ear the dropped wheat, searching among the prickly

stubble.

Notwithstanding all her labour, and the hardship she has to

endure--coarse fare, and churlish treatment at the hands of those who

should love her most--the little agricultural girl still retains some of

that natural inclination towards the pretty and romantic inherent in the

sex. In the spring she makes daisy chains, and winds them round the

baby's neck; or with the stalks of the dandelion makes a chain several

feet in length. She plucks great bunches of the beautiful bluebell, and

of the purple orchis of the meadow; gathers heaps of the cowslip, and

after playing with them a little while, they are left to wither in the

dust by the roadside, while she is sent two or three miles with her

father's dinner. She chants snatches of rural songs, and sometimes three

or four together, joining hands, dance slowly round and round, singing

slowly rude rhymes describing marriage--and not over decent some of

these rhymes are. She has no toys--not one in twenty such girls ever

have a doll; or, if they do, it is but some stick dressed in a rag. Poor

things! they need no artificial dolls; so soon as ever they can lift

it, they are trusted with the real baby. Her parents probably do not

mean to be unkind, and use makes this treatment bearable, but to an

outsider it seems unnecessarily rough, and even brutal. Her mother

shouts at her in a shrill treble perpetually; her father enforces his

orders with a harsh oath and a slap.

The pressure of hard circumstances, the endless battle with poverty,

render men and women both callous to others' feelings, and particularly

strict to those over whom they possess unlimited authority. But the

labourer must not be judged too harshly: there is a scale in these

matters; a proportion as in everything else; an oath from him, and even

a slap on the ear, is really the counterpart of the frown and emphasised

words of a father in a more fortunate class of life; and the children do

not feel it, or think it exceptionally cruel, as the children of a

richer man would. Undoubtedly, however, it does lessen the bond between

child and parent. There is little filial affection among these

cottagers--how should there be? The boy is driven away from home as

early as possible; the girl is made day by day to feel her fault in

being a girl; to neither can the poor man give any small present, or any

occasional treat. What love there is lasts longest between the mother

and her daughter. The only way in which a labourer exhibits his

affection is when another labourer in authority, as a carter, ill-treats

his boy--a too common case--and then he speaks loudly, and very

properly. But even in most serious matters there is a strange

callousness. I have known instances in which a father, aware that a

criminal assault has been attempted by another labourer upon a tender

child of twelve, has refused to prosecute, and the brutal offender would

have escaped without the slightest punishment had not the clergyman

heard of the story.

The slow years roll by--they are indeed slow in an agricultural

village--and the girl, now fifteen, has to go regularly to work in the

fields; that is, if the family be not meantime largely increased. She

has in this latter case plenty of work at home to assist her mother.

Cottagers are not over-clean, but they are not wilfully dirty in their

houses; and with a large family there is much washing and other domestic

matters to attend to, which the mother, now fast growing feeble, cannot

get through herself. In harvest the women get up at four or earlier, and

do their household work before starting for the fields. But, perhaps, by

this time another girl has grown up sufficiently to nurse baby, mind the

young ones, and do slave's work generally. Then the elder daughter goes

to the fields daily when there is work to be had. In arable districts

the women do much work, picking couch grass--a tedious operation--and

hoeing. They never or rarely milk now. In the dead of winter there is

nothing for women to do. At this age--fifteen or sixteen--the girl

perhaps goes out to service at some farmhouse. If she is fortunate

enough to enter the house of one of the modern class of farmers, it is a

lucky day for her when she begins indoor labour. It is to be feared that

the life of a girl of this kind in the old time, and not so long ago, in

the houses of the poorer order of farmers, was a rough one indeed. But

much of that is past, never to return, and our business is with the

present. Where they have a dairy she has to clean the buckets and

milk-cans and other utensils, to help turn the cheeses, and assist the

dairymaid (a most important personage this last) in all kinds of ways.

The work is coarse and rude, but it only lasts a portion of the day, and

she has regular and ample meals. The bacon and cheese soon begin to tell

upon her. The angular bones disappear, the skinny arms grow round, and

presently enormously fat--not much the prettier, perhaps, but far more

pleasant to look at. Her face loses the pinched expression; her cheeks

become full, and round, and rosy; in every way her physical frame

improves. It is wonderful what a difference a few months in a good

farmhouse makes to a girl of this kind. She soon begins to dress better,

not from her wages, for these are small enough, and may commence as low

as L4; but her mistress gives her many things, and, if she is a good

girl, buys her a dress now and then; and with the shilling or two she

asks in advance, she purchases cheap ornaments of the pedlar at the

door. Her life is low enough socially--it is almost an annual round of

working, eating, and sleeping (no one sleeps like a farm-wench); but it

is an infinite improvement upon the struggle for existence at the

cottage. She has no trouble, no thought, no care now. Her mistress may

snap occasionally, her master may grumble, and the dairymaid may snarl;

but there are no slaps on the ear, no kicks, no going to bed supperless.

In summer she goes out in the afternoon haymaking as an extra hand, but

only works a few hours, and it is really only a relaxation. She picks up

some knowledge of cooking, learns how to make herself useful in the

house, and in the course of a year or two, if moderately sharp, is

capable of rising a degree, and obtaining a better salary as a

maid-servant, having nothing to do with a dairy. The four or five pounds

with which she commences may seem a very low sum, but the state of her

domestic education at the time must be taken into consideration. She has

to learn everything. All the years spent in working in the cottage at

home have to be unlearnt--all the old habits replaced by new ones. After

the first year or so her value rises considerably; she may continue in

the house at a higher salary, or go into the town as maid-servant in a

tradesman's family. A large proportion of servant-girls thus find their

way from the country into the town. With these we have nothing further

to do--they are no longer field-farers. A few after several years learn

the art and mystery of butter and cheese, and become dairymaids; and

then, if they are clever, earn good wages--indeed, fabulous prices are

asked by them. There are not, however, so many dairymaids as formerly,

for the small dairies are getting amalgamated and made into larger ones,

and then the farmer, if he makes butter and cheese, employs a dairyman

in preference. This rise to be maid-servant, or to be dairymaid, is the

bright side of the girl's career. There are darker shades which must be

mentioned.

The overcrowding in cottages leads to what may be called an indifference

to decency. It is not that in families decency is wantonly and of a set

purpose disregarded, but stern necessity leads to a coarseness and

indelicacy which hardens the mind and deadens the natural modesty even

of the best girls. Then the low scandals of the village talked over from

cottage to cottage, the rude jokes of the hayfield, the general

looseness and indifference which prevail as to morality, all prepare the

girl for the too common fall. If she remains at home and works in the

fields after the age of fifteen, unless uncommonly strong-minded, it is

an open question whether she will or will not succumb. If she goes into

a farmhouse as servant, the chances are in favour of her escaping

temptation. But in farmhouses she may also sometimes run into the very

jaws of danger. It is not uncommon in some districts for young labourers

to sleep in the house, one or two who milk and have to be on the spot

early. These take their supper in the kitchen or the brewhouse, and,

despite the strictest precautions on the part of the mistress, enjoy

plenty of opportunities for flirting with the girl. Young, full of

animal spirits, giddy and ignorant, she thinks no harm of a romp, and

finally falls, and has to leave her service. If a little may be said in

favour of the poor girls, not a word can be said in favour of the

agricultural men, who are immoral almost without exception, and will

remain so until a better-educated generation with more self-respect

arises. The number of poor girls, from fifteen to five-and-twenty, in

agricultural parishes who have illegitimate offspring is extremely

large, and is illustrated by the fact that, out of the marriages that

take place--and agricultural poor are a marrying class--scarcely any

occur until the condition of the girl is too manifest to be any longer

concealed. Instances could be mentioned where the clergyman's wife, with

a view to check the immorality around her, has offered a reward of a

piece of furniture to the first married woman who does not bear a child

till nine months after marriage; the custom being within three months.

The frequency of the appeals to the petty sessions in rural districts

for orders of contribution, by young unmarried girls, also illustrates

the prevalent immorality. Of late the magistrates have taken the line of

ordering contributions on a higher scale, on the grounds that the

labourer earns larger wages, and that the cost of living has risen, and

also as a check upon the men. This well-intentioned step has had the

precisely opposite effect to what was wished. The labourer with higher

wages feels the demand upon his pocket but very little more. The cost of

living in rural outlying districts has risen only to a very trifling

degree--barely perceptibly, in fact. Bread is cheap--that is the

staple--rents are the same, and there are more allotments than ever,

making vegetables more easy to obtain. The result, therefore, is this,

that the girl feels she can sin with comparative immunity. She is almost

sure to get her order (very few such appeals are refused); let this be

supplemented with some aid from the parish, and she is none the worse

off than before, for there is no prejudice against employing her in the

fields. Should her fall take place with some young farmer's son from

whom she may get a larger contribution in private, or by order of the

magistrates, she is really and truly in a pecuniary sense better off

than she was before, for she has a certain fixed income. The evil is

aggravated by the new law, which enables the order to be extended over a

longer term of years than formerly, so that for fifteen years is a

common thing. If it is decided to recognise immorality, and to provide

against the woman being unduly injured by it, then these orders are

certainly the correct procedure; but if it is desired to suppress it,

then they are a total failure. The girl who has had an illegitimate

child is thought very little the worse of by her friends and her own

class, especially if her seducer is a man who can afford to pay for

it--that is the grand point. If she is fool enough to yield to a man who

is badly off, she may be jeered at as a fool, but rarely reprimanded as

a sinner, not even by her own mother. Such things are not looked upon by

the rural poor as sins, but as accidents of their condition.

It is easy to be hard upon the poor girls, but consider their training.

Many of them cannot read or write; how many even can sew well? The

cottage girl is always a poor hand at her needle, and has to be taught

by the elder servants when she first goes into her place. Accustomed

from childhood to what would be considered abominable indecency in a

higher class of life; constantly hearing phrases which it is impossible

to allude to; running wild about the lanes and fields with stalwart

young men coarser and ruder than those at home; seeing other girls none

the worse off, and commiserated with rather than condemned, what wonder

is it if the natural result takes place? The fairs have been credited

with much of the mischief, and undoubtedly they are productive of evil;

but if they were abolished, the average would in all probability remain

about the same. The evil is inherent, and does not depend upon

circumstances. It is the outcome of a long series of generations; it

cannot be overcome in a decade. Education will do much, but not all.

Youth is always led by the tone of the elder people. Until the tone of

the parent is improved, the conduct of the young will remain much the

same. The more distant a parish from a town, the more outlying and

strictly agricultural, and therefore stagnant, the greater the

immorality. It is the one blot upon the character of the agricultural

poor. They are not thieves, they are not drunkards; if they do drink

they are harmless, and it evaporates in shouting and slang. They are not

riotous; but the immorality cannot be gainsaid. No specific cure for

this state of things can be devised: it must slowly work itself out

under the gradual pressure of an advancing social state. It will be

slow; for, up to the present, the woman has had but a small share of the

benefit that has befallen the labourer through higher wages. If higher

wages mainly go for drink, the wife at home is not much the better. The

women say themselves they are no better off.

If the girl at eighteen or twenty--in most agricultural marriages the

girls are very young--is fortunate enough to have placed her faith in a

man who redeems his word, then comes the difficulty of the cottage and

the furniture to fill it. Cottages are often difficult to find,

especially anywhere near a man's work, which is the great object. The

furniture required is not much, but there must be some. The labourer

does not deal much with the town furniture-dealer. A great deal of the

furniture in cottages has been picked up at the sales of farmers on

quitting their tenancies. Such are the old chairs, the formal sideboards

and eight-day clocks standing in tall, square oaken cases by the

staircase in the cottage. Such, too, are the great wooden bedsteads of

oak or maple upstairs; and from the same source come the really good

feather-beds and blankets. The women--especially the elder women--go to

great trouble, and pinch themselves, to find a way of purchasing a good

bed, and set no small pride upon it. These old oaken bedsteads, and

sideboards, and chairs have perhaps been in the farmhouse for three or

four generations, and are at last sold because the final representative

of the family is imbued with modern ideas, and quits farming for trade.

The cottagers always attend sales like this, and occasionally get hold

of good bargains, and so it is that really good substantial furniture

may often be found in the possession of the better class of labourers.

The old people accumulate these things, and when their sons or daughters

marry, can generally spare a few chairs, a bedstead and bed, and with a

little crockery from other relations, and a few utensils bought in the

adjacent town, the cottage is furnished sufficiently well for a couple

whose habits are necessarily simple. After marriage the hard work of the

woman's life really begins--work compared with which her early

experience at home is nothing; and many, if they have left situations in

farmhouses, deeply regret the change. The labourer can hardly be

expected to feel the more exalted sentiments; and if in the upper

classes even it is said that romance ends with marriage, it is doubly,

literally true of the agricultural poor. In addition to her household

work, she has to labour in the fields, or to wash--perhaps worse than

the former alternative; and after a while her husband, too commonly

wearying of his home, in which he finds nothing but a tired woman and

troublesome children, leaves her for the public-house, and consumes

two-thirds of their slender income in beer. The attachment of the woman

for her husband lasts longer than that of the man for the woman. Even

when he has become a confirmed drunkard, and her life with incessant

labour has become a burden to her, she will struggle on, striving to get

bread for the children and the rent for the landlord. She knows that as

evening comes on, instead of sitting down to rest, her duty will be to

go down to the public-house and wait till it pleases her lord and master

to try to stagger home, and then to guide his clumsy steps to the

threshold. Of course there are wives who become as bad as their

husbands, who drink, or do worse, and neglect their homes, but they are

the exception. As a rule, the woman, once married, does her best to keep

her home together.

The wife of the labourer does not get her shins smashed with heavy kicks

from hobnailed boots, such as the Lancashire ruffians administer; but,

although serious wife-beating cases are infrequent, there are few women

who escape an occasional blow from their husbands. Most of them get a

moderate amount of thrashing in the course of their lives, and take it

much as they take the hardships and poverty of their condition, as a

necessity not to be escaped. The labourer is not downright brutal to his

wife, but he certainly thinks he has a right to chastise her when she

displeases him. Once in authority, the labourer is stern, hard, and

inconsiderate of the feelings of others, and he is in authority in his

own cottage. The wife has been accustomed to such treatment more or less

from her childhood; she has been slapped and banged about at home, and

therefore thinks comparatively little of a blow from her husband's hand.

The man does not mean it so brutally as it appears to outsiders. This

semi-wife-beating is only too prevalent.

Does the incessant labour undergone by an agricultural woman result in

ill effects to her physical frame? The day-work in the fields, the

haymaking, and such labour as is paid for by the day and not by the

piece, cannot do any injury, for it is light, and the hours are short.

In some districts the women do not come before half-past eight, and

leave a little after four, and they have a long hour out for dinner. It

is the piece-work of the corn-harvest that tries the frame, when work

begins at sunrise or shortly after, and lasts till the latest twilight,

and when it is work, real muscular strain. This cannot but leave its

mark. Otherwise the field is not injurious to the woman so far as the

labour is concerned, and the exposure is not so great as has been

supposed, because women are scarcely ever expected to work in wet

weather. The worst of the exposure is probably endured upon the arable

fields in the bitter winds of spring; but this does not last very long.

In what way field-labour is degrading to the women it is difficult to

understand. The only work of a disgusting nature now performed by women

is the beating of clots on pasture-land, and that is quickly over. After

all, there is nothing so very dreadful in it. Stone-picking,

couch-clearing, hoeing, haymaking, reaping, certainly none of these are

in any way disgusting operations. Women do not attend to cattle now. As

to the immorality, undoubtedly a great deal of what is coarse and rude

does pass upon the hayfield, but the hayfield does not originate it; if

the same men and women met elsewhere, the same jokes would be uttered

and conduct indulged in. The position of agricultural women is a painful

one to contemplate, and their lives full of hardships; but field-labour

cannot be fairly accused as the cause of the evils they endure. Their

strength is overstrained in the cornfield; but what can you do? It is

their gold-mine--their one grand opportunity of getting a little money.

It would be cruel kindness to deny it to them; and, in point of fact,

except by interfering with the liberty of the subject, it would be

impossible to prevent them. Farm-labour is certainly to be preferred to

much of the work that women do in manufacturing districts. At least

there is no overcrowding; there is plenty of fresh air, and the woman

who works in the field looks quite as robust and healthy as her sister

sitting all day in a confined factory.

It used to be common to see women dressed in a kind of smock-frock; this

was in the days when they milked, and it is still occasionally worn. Now

they generally wear linsey dresses in the winter, and cotton in the

summer, at prices from 4-1/2d. to 6d. per yard. They wear boots nailed and

tipped much like the men, but not so heavy, and in rough weather

corduroy gaiters. Their cooking is rude and detestable to any one else's

ideas; but it appears exactly suited to the coarse tastes and hearty

appetite of their husbands. Being uneducated, and a large proportion

unable to read, their chief intellectual amusement consists in

tittle-tattle and gossip. They are generally inclined to be religious

after a fashion, and frequent the chapel or the cottage in which the

itinerant preacher holds forth. In summer this preacher will mount upon

a waggon placed in a field by the roadside, and draw a large audience,

chiefly women, who loudly respond and groan and mutter after the most

approved manner. Now and then an elderly woman may be found who is

considered to have a gift of preaching, and holds forth at great length,

quoting Scripture right and left. The exhibitions of emotion on the part

of the women at such meetings and in the services in their cottages are

not pleasant to listen to, but the impression left on the mind is that

they are in earnest.

They are a charitable race, and eager to help each other. They will

watch by the bedsides of their sick neighbours, divide the loaf of

bread, look after the children and trudge weary miles to the town for

medicine. On the other hand, they are almost childlike in imbibing

jealousies and hatreds, and unsparing in abuse and imputation towards a

supposed enemy. They are bolder in speech than their husbands to those

who occupy higher places in the social scale. It cannot be said that

agricultural women are handsome. In childhood they are too often thin

and stunted; later they shoot up and grow taller, but remain thin and

bony till from eighteen to twenty, when they get plumper, and then is

their period of prettiness, if at all. Bright eyes, clear complexions,

and glossy hair form their attractions, for their features are scarcely

ever good. The brief beauty of the prime of youth speedily fades, and at

five-and-twenty the agricultural woman, especially if married, is pale

or else burnt by the sun to a brown, with flat chest and rounded

shoulders. It is rare indeed to see a woman with any pretensions to what

is called a figure. It would be wonderful if there were, for much of the

labour induces a stooping position, and they are never taught when

young to sit upright.

Growing plainer and plainer as years go by, the elder women are wrinkled

and worn-looking, and have contracted a perpetual stoop. Many live to a

great age. In small parishes it is common to find a large number of

women of seventy and eighty, and there are few cottages which do not

contain an old woman. This is hardly a result in accordance with the

labour they have undergone. The explanation probably is that, continued

through a series of generations, it has produced a strength and stamina

which can survive almost anything. Certain it is that young couples

about to marry often experience much difficulty in finding cottages,

because they are occupied by extremely aged pairs; and landlords,

anxious to tear down and remove old cottages tumbling to pieces, are

restrained from doing so out of regard for the aged tenants, who cling

with a species of superstitious tenderness to the crumbling walls and

decayed thatch. At this age, at seventy-five or even eighty, the

agricultural woman retains a strength of body astonishing to a town-bred

woman. She will walk eight or ten miles, without apparent fatigue, to

and from the nearest town for her provisions. She will almost to the

last carry her prong out into the hayfield, and do a little work in some

corner, and bear her part in the gleaning after the harvest. She lives

almost entirely upon weak tea and bread sops. Her mental powers continue

nearly unimpaired, and her eyes are still good, though her teeth have

long gone. She will laugh over memories of practical jokes played at

harvest-homes half-a-century ago; and slowly spells over the service in

a prayer-book which asks blessings upon a king instead of a queen. She

often keeps the village "confectioner's" shop--_i.e._, a few bottles of

sweets and jumbles in the window, side by side with "twists" of whipcord

for the ploughboys and carters, and perhaps has a license for tobacco

and snuff.

But long before this age they have in most cases been kept by the

parish. The farmers who form the guardians know well the history of the

poor of their parishes, and remembering the long years of hard work,

always allow as liberal a relief as they can to these women. Out of all

their many children and grandchildren, it may happen that one has got on

fairly well in life, has a business as a blacksmith, or tinker, or

carpenter, and gives her a shilling or so a week; and a shilling goes a

long way with a woman who lives upon tea and sops. In their latter days

these women resemble the pollard oaks, which linger on year after year,

and finally fall from sheer decay.

_AN ENGLISH HOMESTEAD._

It is easy to pass along a country road without observing half of the

farmhouses, so many being situated at a distance from the highway, and

others hidden by the thick hedges and the foliage of the trees. This is

especially the case in districts chiefly occupied in pasture farming,

meadow land being usually found along the banks of rivers, on broad

level plains, or in slightly undulating prairie-like country. A splendid

belt of meadows often runs at the base of the chalk hills, where the

springs break out; and it is here that some of the most beautiful

pastoral scenery is to be found.

By the side of the highway there are gates at intervals in the

close-cropped hedge--kept close-cropped by the strict orders of the road

surveyors--giving access to the green fields through which runs a

waggon-track, apparently losing itself in the grass. This track will

take the explorer to a farmhouse. It is not altogether pleasant to drive

over in a spring trap, as the wheels jolt in the hard ruts, and the

springs are shaken in the deep furrows, the vehicle going up and down

like a boat upon the waves. Why there should be such furrows in a meadow

is a question that naturally arises in the mind. Whether it be mown with

the scythe or the mowing-machine, it is of advantage to have the surface

of the field as nearly as possible level; and it is therefore most

probable that these deep furrows had their origin at a period when a

different state of things prevailed, when the farmer strove to grow as

much wheat as possible, and devoted every acre that he dared break up to

the plough. Many of these fields were ill adapted for the growth of

corn, the soil unsuitable and liable to be partially flooded;

consequently as soon as the market was opened, and the price of wheat

declined, so that rapid fortunes could no longer be made by it, the

fields were allowed to return to their natural condition. No trouble was

taken to relevel the land, and the furrows remain silent witnesses to

the past. They are useful as drains it is true; but, being so broad,

the water only passes off slowly and encourages the rough grass and

"bull-polls" to spring up, which are as uneatable by cattle as the

Australian spinifex.

The waggon-track is not altogether creditable to the farmer, who would,

one would have thought, have had a good road up to his house at all

events. It is very wide, and in damp weather every one who drives along

it goes further and further out into the grass to find a firm spot, till

as much space is rendered barren as by one of the great hedges, now so

abominated. The expense of laying down stone is considerable in some

localities where the geological formation does not afford quarries; yet

even then there is a plan, simple in itself, but rarely resorted to, by

which a great saving in outlay may be effected. Any one who will look at

a cart-track will see that there are three parallel marks left by the

passage of the cart upon the ground. The two outside ruts are caused by

the wheels, and between these is a third beaten in by the hoofs of the

horse. The plan consists in placing stone, broken up small, not across

the whole width of the track, but in these three ruts only; for it is in

these ruts alone that the wear takes place, and, if the ground were

firm there, no necessity would exist to go farther into the field. To be

thoroughly successful, a trench, say six or eight inches wide, and about

as deep, should be cut in the place of each rut, and these trenches

macadamised. Grass grows freely in the narrow green strips between the

ruts, and the track has something of the appearance of a railroad. It is

astonishing how long these metals, as it were, will last, when once well

put down; and the track has a neat, effective look. The foot-passenger

is as much benefited as the tenant of the field. In wet weather he walks

upon the macadamised strip dryshod, and in summer upon either of the

grass strips, easily and comfortably, without going out into the

mowing-grass to have the pleasure of turf under his feet.

These deep furrows are also awkward to cross with heavy loads of hay or

straw, and it requires much skill to build a load able to withstand the

severe jolting and lurching. Some of the worst are often filled up with

a couple of large faggots in the harvest season. These tracks run by the

side of the hedge, and the ditches are crossed by bridges or "drocks."

The last gate opens into a small field surrounded with a high thick

hawthorn hedge, itself a thing of beauty in May and June, first with the

May blossom and afterwards with the delicate-tinted dog or wild roses. A

spreading ash-tree stands on either side of the gateway, from which on

King Charles's day the ploughboys carefully select small branches, those

with the leaves evenly arranged, instead of odd numbers, to place in

their hats. Tall elm-trees grow close together in the hedge and upon the

"shore" of the ditch, enclosing the place in a high wall of foliage. In

the branches are the rooks' nests, built of small twigs apparently

thrown together, and yet so firmly intertwined as to stand the swaying

of the tree-tops in the rough blasts of winter. In the spring the rook

builds a second nest on the floor of the old one, and this continues

till five or six successive layers may be traced; and when at last some

ruder tempest strews the grass with its ruin, there is enough wood to

fill a bushel basket.

The dovecot is fixed in the fork of one of the larger elms, where the

trunk divides into huge boughs, each the size of a tree; and in the long

rank grass near the hedge the backs of a black Berkshire pig or two may

be seen like porpoises rolling in the green sea. Here and there an

ancient apple-tree, bent down and bowed to the ground with age, offers a

mossy, shady seat upon one of its branches which has returned to the

earth from which it sprung. Some wooden posts grown green and

lichen-covered, standing at regular intervals, show where the housewife

dries her linen. Right before the very door a great horse-chestnut tree

rears itself in all the beauty of its thousands of blossoms, hiding half

the house. A small patch of ground in front is railed in with wooden

palings to keep out the pigs, and poultry, and dogs--for almost every

visitor brings with him one or more dogs--and in this narrow garden grow

velvety wall-flowers, cloves, pinks, shrubs of lavender, and a few herbs

which are useful for seasoning. The house is built of brick; but the

colour is toned down by age, and against the wall a pear-tree is trained

upon one side, and upon the other a cherry-tree, so that at certain

seasons one may rise in the morning and gather the fresh fruits from the

window. The lower windows were once latticed; but the old frames have

been replaced with the sash, which if not so picturesque, affords more

light, and most old farmhouses are deficient in the supply of light. The

upper windows remain latticed still. The red tiles of the roof are dull

with lichen and the beating of the weather; and the chimney, if looked

at closely, is full of tiny holes--it is where the leaden pellets from

guns fired at the mischievous starlings have struck the bricks. A pair

of doves perched upon the roof-tree coo amorously to each other, and a

thin streak of blue smoke rises into the still air.

The door is ajar, or wide open. There is no fear here of thieves, or

street-boys throwing stones into the hall. Excepting in rain or rough

wind, and at night, that front door will be open almost all the summer

long. When shut at night it is fastened with a wooden bar passing across

the whole width of the door, and fitting into iron staples on each

post--a simple contrivance, but very strong and not easily tampered

with. Many of the interior doors still open with the old thumb-latch;

but the piece of shoe-string to pull and lift it is now relegated to the

cottages, and fast disappearing even there before brass-handled locks.

This house is not old enough to possess the nail-studded door of solid

oak and broad stone-built porch of some farmhouses still occasionally to

be found, and which date from the sixteenth century. The porch here

simply projects about two feet, and is supported by trellis-work, up

which the honeysuckle has been trained. A path of stone slabs leads from

the palings up to the threshold, and the hall within is paved with

similar flags. The staircase is opposite the doorway, narrow, and

guiltless of oilcloth or carpeting; and with reason, for the tips and

nails of the heavy boots which tramp up and down it would speedily wear

carpets into rags. There is a door at the bottom of the staircase closed

at night. By the side of the staircase is a doorway which leads into the

dairy--two steps lower than the front of the house.

The sitting-room is on the left of the hall, and the floor is of the

same cold stone flags, which in damp weather become wet and slimy. These

flags, in fact, act as a barometer, and foretell rain with great

accuracy, as it were perspiring with latent moisture at its approach.

The chimney was originally constructed for a wood fire upon the hearth,

and of enormous size, so that several sides of bacon could be hung up

inside to be smoke-dried. The fireplace was very broad, so that huge

logs could be thrown at once upon the fire with very little trouble of

sawing them short. Since coal has come into general use, and wood grown

scarce, the fireplace has been partly built up and an iron grate

inserted, which looks out of place in so large a cavity. The curious

fire-dogs, upon which the wood was thrown, may still, perhaps, be found

upstairs in some corner of the lumber-room. On the mantelpiece are still

preserved, well polished and bright, the several pieces of the "jack" or

cooking apparatus; and a pair of great brazen candlesticks ornament it

at each end. A leaden or latten tobacco-bowl, a brazen pestle and

mortar, and half-a-dozen odd figures in china, are also scattered upon

it, surmounted by a narrow looking-glass. In one corner stands an old

eight-day clock with a single hour hand--minute hands being a modern

improvement; but it is silent, and its duties are performed by an

American timepiece supported upon a bracket against the wall. Upstairs,

however, upon the landing, a similar ancient piece of clockmaking still

ticks solemn and slow with a ponderous melancholy. The centre of the

room is occupied with an oaken table, solid and enduring, but

inconvenient to sit at; and upon each side of the fireplace is a

stiff-backed arm-chair. A ledge under the window forms a pleasant seat

in summer. Before the fireplace is a rug, the favourite resort of the

spaniels and cats. The rest of the floor used to be bare; but of late

years a square of cocoanut matting has been laid down. A cumbrous piece

of furniture takes up almost half of one side--not known in modern

manufactories. It is of oak, rudely polished, and inlaid with brass. At

the bottom are great deep drawers, pulled open with brass rings

ornamented with dogs' heads. In these drawers are kept

cow-drenches--bottles of oils for the wounds which cattle sometimes get

from nails or kicks; dog-whips and pruning-knives; a shot-belt and

powder-flask; an old horse-pistol; a dozen odd stones or fossils picked

up upon the farm and kept as curiosities; twenty or thirty old almanacs,

and a file of the county paper for forty years; and a hundred similar

odds and ends. Above the drawers comes a desk with a few pigeon-holes;

a desk little used, for the farmer is less of a literary turn than

almost any other class. The pigeon-holes are stuffed full of old papers,

recipes for cattle medicines, and, perhaps, a book of divinity or

sermons printed in the days of Charles II., leather-covered and

worm-eaten. Still higher are a pair of cupboards where china, the

tea-set, and the sugar and groceries in immediate use are kept. On the

top, which is three or four inches under the ceiling, are two or three

small brown-paper parcels of grass seeds, and a variety of nondescript

articles. Opposite, on the other wall, and close above the chimneypiece,

so as to be kept dry, is the gun-rack with two double-barrels, a long

single-barrel duck gun, and a cavalry sabre, worn once a year by a son

of the house who goes out to training in the yeomanry.

There are a few pictures, not of a high class--three or four prints

depicting Dick Turpin's ride to York, and a coloured sketch of some

steeplechase winner, or a copy of a well-known engraving representing a

feat accomplished many years ago at a farm. A flock of sheep were shorn,

the wool carded and spun, and a coat made of it, and worn by the

flockowner, and all in one day. From this room a door opens into the

cellar and pantry, partly underground, and reached by three or four

steps.

On the other side of the hall is the parlour, which was originally

floored, like the sitting-room, with stone flags, since taken up and

replaced by boards. This is carpeted, and contains a comfortable

old-fashioned sofa, horse-hair chairs, and upon the side tables may,

perhaps, be found a few specimens of valuable old china, made to do duty

as flower-vases, and filled with roses. The room has a fresh, sweet

smell from the open window and the flowers. It tempts almost

irresistibly to repose in the noontide heat of a summer's day.

Upstairs there are two fair-sized bedrooms, furnished with four-post

wooden bedsteads. The second flight of stairs, going up to the attic,

has also a door at the foot. This house is built upon a simple but

effective design, well calculated for the purposes to be served. It

resembles two houses placed not end to end, as in a block, but side by

side, and each part has a separate roof. Under the front roof, which is

somewhat higher than the other, are the living-rooms of the family:

sitting-room, parlour, bedroom, and attics, or servants' bedrooms. Under

the lower roof are the offices, the cheese-loft, dairy, kitchen, cellar,

and wood-house. Numerous doors give easy communication on each floor, so

that the house consists of two distinct portions, and the business is

kept quite apart from the living rooms, and yet close to them. This is,

perhaps, the most convenient manner in which a dairy farmhouse can be

built; and the plan was undoubtedly the result of experience. Of course,

in dairy-farming upon a very extended scale, or as a gentlemanly

amusement, it would be preferable to have the offices entirely apart,

and at some distance from the dwelling-house. These remarks apply to an

ordinary farm of moderate size.

Leaving the hall by the door at the side of the staircase, two steps

descend into the dairy, which is almost invariably floored with stone

flags, even in localities where brick is used for the flooring of the

sitting-room. The great object aimed at in the construction of the dairy

was coolness, and freedom from dust as much as possible. The stone flags

ensure a cool floor; and the windows always open to the north, so that

neither the summer sunshine nor the warm southern winds can injuriously

affect the produce. It is a long open room, whitewashed, in the centre

of which stands the cheese-tub, until lately invariably made of wood,

but now frequently of tin, this material taking much less trouble to

keep clean. The cheese-tub is large enough for a Roman lady's bath of

milk. Against one wall are the whey-leads--shallow, long, and broad

vessels of wood, lined with lead, supported two or three feet above the

floor, so that buckets can be placed underneath. In these "leads" the

whey is kept, and drawn off by pulling up a wooden plug. Under the

"leads"--as out of the way--are some of the great milk-pans into which

the milk is poured. Pussy sometimes dips her nose into these, and

whitens her whiskers with cream. At one end of the room is the

cheese-press. The ancient press, with its complicated arrangement of

long iron levers weighted at the end something like a steelyard, and

drawn up by cords and pulleys, has been taken down and lies discarded in

the lumber-room. The pressure in the more modern machine is obtained

from a screw. The rennet-vat is perhaps hidden behind the press, and

there are piles of the cheese-moulds or vats beside it, into which the

curd is placed when fit to be compressed into the proper shape and

consistency. All the utensils here are polished, and clean to the last

degree; without extreme cleanliness success in cheese or butter making

cannot be achieved. The windows are devoid of glass; they are really

wind doors, closed when necessary, with a shutter on hinges like a

cupboard door. Cats and birds are prevented from entering by means of

wire screens--like a coarse netting of wire--and an upright iron bar

keeps out more dangerous thieves. There is a copper for scalding milk.

When in good order there is scarcely any odour in a dairy,

notwithstanding the decidedly strong smell of some of the materials

employed: free egress of air and perfect cleanliness takes off all but

the faintest _astringent_ flavour. In summer it is often the custom of

dairymaids to leave buckets full of water standing under the "leads" or

elsewhere out of the way, or a milk-pan is left with water in it, to

purify the atmosphere. Water, it is well known, has a remarkable power

of preventing the air from going "dead" as it were. A model dairy

should have a small fountain in some convenient position, with a jet

constantly playing. The state of the atmosphere has the most powerful

effect upon the contents of the dairy, especially during times of

electrical tension.

To the right of the dairy is the brewhouse, now rarely used for the

purpose implied in its name, though the tubs, and coolers, and other

"plant" necessary for the process are still preserved. Here there is a

large copper also; and the oven often opens on to the brewhouse. In this

place the men have their meals. Next to it is the wood-house, used for

the storage of the wood which is required for immediate use, and must

therefore be dry; and beyond that the kitchen, where the fire is still

upon the hearth, though coal is mixed with the logs and faggots. Along

the whole length of this side of the house there is a paved or pitched

courtyard enclosed by a low brick wall, with one or two gates opening

upon the paths which lead to the rickyards and the stalls. The

buttermilk and refuse from the dairy runs by a channel cut in the stone

across the court into a vault or well sunk in the ground, from whence

it is dipped for the pigs. The vault is closed at the mouth by a heavy

wooden lid. There is a well and pump for water here; sometimes with a

windlass, when the well is deep. If the water be low or out of

condition, it is fetched in yokes from the nearest running stream. The

acid or "eating" power of the buttermilk, &c., may be noted in the

stones, which in many places are scooped or hollowed out. A portion of

the court is roofed in, and is called the "skilling." It is merely

covered in without walls, the roof supported upon oaken posts. Under

this the buckets are placed to dry after being cleaned, and here the

churn may often be seen. A separate staircase, rising from the dairy,

gives access to the cheese-loft. It is an immense apartment, reaching

from one end of the house to the other, and as lofty as the roof will

permit, for it is not ceiled. The windows are like those of the dairy.

Down the centre are long double shelves sustained upon strong upright

beams, tier upon tier from the floor as high as the arms can

conveniently reach. Upon these shelves the cheese is stored, each lying

upon its side; and, as no two cheeses are placed one upon the other

until quite ready for eating, a ton or two occupies a considerable

space while in process of drying. They are also placed in rows upon the

floor, which is made exceptionally strong, and supported upon great

beams to bear the weight. The scales used to be hung from a beam

overhead, and consisted of an iron bar, at each end of which a square

board was slung with ropes--one board to pile up the cheese on, and the

other for the counterpoise of weights. These rude and primitive scales

are now generally superseded by modern and more accurate instruments,

weighing to a much smaller fraction. Stone half-hundredweights and stone

quarters were in common use not long since. A cheese-loft, when full, is

a noble sight of its kind, and represents no little labour and skill.

When sold, the cheese is carefully packed in the cart with straw to

prevent its being injured. The oil or grease from the cheese gradually

works its way into the shelves and floor, and even into the staircase,

till the woodwork seems saturated with it. Rats and mice are the pests

of the loft; and so great is their passion for cheese that neither cats,

traps, nor poison can wholly repress these invaders, against whom

unceasing war is waged. The starlings--who, if the roof be of thatch,

as it is in many farmhouses, make their nests in it--occasionally carry

their holes right through, and are unmercifully exterminated when they

venture within reach, or they would quickly let the rain and the

daylight in.

As the dairy and offices face the north, so the front of the house--the

portion used for domestic purposes--has a southern aspect, which

experience has proved to be healthy. But at the same time, despite its

compactness and general convenience, there are many defects in the

building--defects chiefly of a sanitary character. It is very doubtful

if there are any drains at all. Even though the soil be naturally dry,

the ground floor is almost always cold and damp. The stone flags are

themselves cold enough, and are often placed upon the bare earth. The

threshold is on a level with the ground outside, and sometimes a step

lower, and in wet weather the water penetrates to the hall. There is

another disadvantage. If the door be left open, which it usually is,

frogs, toads, and creeping things generally, sometimes make their way

in, though ruthlessly swept out again; and an occasional snake from the

long grass at the very door is an unpleasant, though perfectly harmless

visitor. The floor should be raised a foot or so above the level of the

earth, and some provision made against the damp by a layer of concrete

or something of the kind. If not, even if boards be substituted for the

flags, they will soon decay. It often happens that farmhouses upon

meadow land are situated on low ground, which in winter is saturated

with water which stands in the furrows, and makes the footpaths leading

to the house impassable except to water-tight boots. This must, and

undoubtedly does affect the health of the inmates, and hence probably

the prevalence of rheumatism. The site upon which the house stands

should be so drained as to carry off the water. Some soils contract to

an appreciable extent in a continuance of drought, and expand in an

equal degree with wet--a fact apparent to any one who walks across a

field where the soil is clay, in a dry time, when the deep, wide cracks

cannot be overlooked. Alternate swelling and contraction of the earth

under the foundations of a house produce a partial dislocation of the

brickwork, and hence it is common enough to see cracks running up the

walls. Had the site been properly drained, and the earth consequently

always dry, this would not have happened; and it is a matter of

consideration for the landlord, who in time may find it necessary to

shore up a wall with a buttress. The great difference in the temperature

of a drained soil and an undrained one has often been observed,

amounting sometimes to as much as twenty degrees--a serious matter where

health is concerned. A foolish custom was observed in the building of

many old farmhouses, _i.e._, of carrying beams of wood across the

chimney--a practice that has led to disastrous fires. The soot

accumulates. These huge cavernous chimneys are rarely swept, and at last

catch alight and smoulder for many days: presently fire breaks out in

the middle of a room under which the beam passes.

Houses erected in blocks or in towns do not encounter the full force of

the storms of winter to the same degree as a solitary farmhouse,

standing a quarter or half-a-mile from any other dwelling. This is the

reason why the old farmers planted elm-trees and encouraged the growth

of thick hawthorn hedges close to the homestead. The north-east and the

south-west are the quarters from whence most is to be dreaded: the

north-east for the bitter wind which sweeps along and grows colder from

the damp, wet meadows it passes over; and the south-west for the driving

rain, lasting sometimes for days and weeks together. Trees and hedges

break the force of the gales, and in summer shelter from the glaring

sun.

The architectural arrangement of the farmhouse just described gives

almost perfect privacy. Except visitors, no one comes to the front door

or passes unpleasantly close to the windows. Labourers and others all go

to the courtyard at the back. The other plans upon which farmsteads are

built are far from affording similar privacy. There are some which, in

fact, are nothing but an enlarged and somewhat elongated cottage, with

the dwelling-rooms at one end and the dairy and offices at the other,

and the bedrooms over both. Everybody and everything brought to or taken

from the place has to pass before the dwelling-room windows--a most

unpleasant arrangement. Another style is square, with low stone walls

whitewashed, and thatched roof of immense height. Against it is a

lean-to, the eaves of the roof of which are hardly three feet from the

ground. So high-pitched a roof necessitates the employment of a great

amount of woodwork, and the upper rooms have sloping ceilings. They may

look picturesque from a distance, but are inconvenient and uncouth

within, and admirably calculated for burning. A somewhat superior

description is built in the shape of a carpenter's "square." The

dwelling-rooms form, as it were, one house, and the offices, dairy and

cheese-loft are added on at one end at right angles. The courtyard is in

the triangular space between. For some things this is a convenient

arrangement; but there still remains the disagreeableness of the noise,

and, at times, strong odours from the courtyard under the windows of the

dwelling-house. Nearly all farmsteads have awkwardly low ceilings, which

in a town would cause a close atmosphere, but are not so injurious in

the open country, with doors constantly ajar. In erecting a modern house

this defect would, of course, be avoided. The great thickness of the

walls is sometimes a deception; for in pulling down old buildings it is

occasionally found that the interior of the wall is nothing but loose

broken stones and bricks enclosed or rammed in between two walls. The

staircases are generally one of the worst features of the old houses,

being between a wall and a partition--narrow, dark, steep, and awkwardly

placed, and without windows or handrails. These houses were obviously

built for a people living much out of doors.

_JOHN SMITH'S SHANTY._

He was standing in the ditch leaning heavily upon the long handle of his

axe. It was a straight stick of ash, roughly shaved down to some sort of

semblance of smoothness, such as would have worked up an unpractised

hand into a mass of blisters in ten minutes' usage, but which glided

easily through those horny palms, leaving no mark of friction. The

continuous outdoor labour, the beating of innumerable storms, and the

hard, coarse fare, had dried up all the original moisture of the hand,

till it was rough, firm, and cracked or chapped like a piece of wood

exposed to the sun and weather. The natural oil of the skin, which gives

to the hand its beautiful suppleness and delicate sense of touch, was

gone like the sap in the tree he was felling, for it was early in the

winter. However the brow might perspire, there was no dampness on the

hand, and the helve of the axe was scarcely harder and drier. In order,

therefore, that the grasp might be firm, it was necessary to

artificially wet the palms, and hence that custom which so often

disgusts lookers-on, of spitting on the hands before commencing work.

This apparently gratuitous piece of dirtiness is in reality absolutely

necessary. Men with hands in this state have hardly any feeling in them;

they find it difficult to pick up anything small, as a pin--the fingers

fumble over it; and as for a pen, they hold it like a hammer. His chest

was open to the north wind, which whistled through the bare branches of

the tall elm overhead as if they were the cordage of a ship, and came in

sudden blasts through the gaps in the hedge, blowing his shirt back, and

exposing the immense breadth of bone, and rough dark skin tanned to a

brown-red by the summer sun while mowing. The neck rose from it short

and thick like that of a bull, and the head was round, and covered with

a crop of short grizzled hair not yet quite grey, but fast losing its

original chestnut colour. The features were fairly regular, but coarse,

and the nose flattened. An almost worn-out old hat thrown back on the

head showed a low, broad, wrinkled forehead. The eyes were small and

bleared, set deep under shaggy eyebrows. The corduroy trousers, yellow

with clay and sand, were shortened below the knee by leather straps like

garters, so as to exhibit the whole of the clumsy boots, with soles like

planks, and shod with iron at heel and tip. These boots weigh seven

pounds the pair; and in wet weather, with clay and dirt clinging to

them, must reach nearly double that.

In spite of all the magnificent muscular development which this man

possessed, there was nothing of the Hercules about him. The grace of

strength was wanting, the curved lines were lacking; all was gaunt,

angular, and square. The chest was broad enough, but flat, a framework

of bones hidden by a rough hairy skin; the breasts did not swell up like

the rounded prominences of the antique statue. The neck, strong enough

as it was to bear the weight of a sack of corn with ease, was too short,

and too much a part, as it were, of the shoulders. It did not rise up

like a tower, distinct in itself; and the muscles on it, as they moved,

produced hollow cavities distressing to the eye. It was strength

without beauty; a mechanical kind of power, like that of an engine,

working through straight lines and sharp angles. There was too much of

the machine, and too little of the animal; the lithe, easy motion of the

lion or the tiger was not there. The impression conveyed was, that such

strength had been gained through a course of incessant exertion of the

rudest kind, unassisted by generous food and checked by unnatural

exposure.

John Smith heaved up his axe and struck at the great bulging roots of

the elm, from which he had cleared away the earth with his spade. A

heavy chip flew out with a dull thud on the sward. The straight handle

of the axe increased the labour of the work, for in this curiously

conservative country the American improvement of the double curved

handle has not yet been adopted. Chip after chip fell in the ditch, or

went spinning out into the field. The axe rose and fell with a slow,

monotonous motion. Though there was immense strength in every blow,

there was no vigour in it. Suddenly, while it was swinging in the air

overhead, there came the faint, low echo of a distant railway whistle,

and the axe was dropped at once, without even completing the blow.

"That's the express," he muttered, and began cleaning the dirt from his

shoes. The daily whistle of the express was the signal for luncheon.

Hastily throwing on a slop hung on the bushes, and over that a coat, he

picked up a small bag, and walked slowly off down the side of the hedge

to where the highway road went by. Here he sat down, somewhat sheltered

by a hawthorn bush, in the ditch, facing the road, and drew out his

bread and cheese.

About a quarter of a loaf of bread, or nearly, and one slice of cheese

was this full-grown and powerful man's dinner that cold, raw winter's

day. His drink was a pint of cold weak tea, kept in a tin can, for these

men are moderate enough with liquor at their meals, whatever they may be

at other times. He held the bread in his left hand and the cheese was

placed on it, and kept in its place by the thumb, the grimy dirt on

which was shielded by a small piece of bread beneath it from the

precious cheese. His plate and dish was his broad palm, his only

implement a great jack-knife with a buck-horn handle. He ate slowly,

thoughtfully, deliberately; weighing each mouthful, chewing the cud as

it were. All the man's motions were heavy and slow, deadened as if

clogged with a great load. There was no "life" in him. What little

animation there was left had taken him to eat his dinner by the

roadside--the instinct of sociality--that if possible he might exchange

a word with some one passing. In factories men work in gangs, and

hundreds are often within call of each other; a rough joke or an

occasional question can be put and answered; there is a certain amount

of sympathy, a sensation of company and companionship. But alone in the

fields, the human instinct of friendship is checked, the man is driven

back upon himself and his own narrow range of thought, till the mind and

heart grow dull, and there only remains such a vague ill-defined want as

carried John Smith to the roadside that day.

He had finished his cheese and lit a short clay pipe, and thrust his

hands deep in his pockets, when there was a rustling noise in the hedge

a little farther down, and a short man jumped out into the road--even

jumping with his hands in his pockets. He saw Smith directly and came

towards him, and sat himself on a heap of flints used for mending the

road.

"What's thee at to-day?" asked John, after a pause.