"Ditching," said the other laconically, pushing out one foot by way of

illustrating the fact. It was covered with black mud far above the

ankle, and there were splashes of mud up to his waist--his hands, as he

proceeded to light his pipe, were black, too, from the same cause.

"Thee's bin in main deep," said John, after a slow survey of the other's

appearance.

The fellow stamped his boot on the ground, and the slime and slush oozed

out of it and formed a puddle. "That's pretty stuff to stand in for a

man of sixty-four, yent it, John?" With a volubility and energy of

speech little to be expected from his wizened appearance, the hedger and

ditcher entered into details of his job. He began work at six that

morning with stiff legs and swollen feet, and as he stood in the mingled

mire and water, the rheumatism came gradually on, rising higher up his

limbs from the ankles, and growing sharper with every twinge, while the

cold and bitter wind cut through his thin slop on his chest, which was

not so strong as it used to be. His arms got stiff with the labour of

lifting up shovelful after shovelful of heavy mud to plaster the side of

the ditch, his feet turned cold as "flints," and the sickly smell of the

slime upset his stomach so that when he tried to eat his bread and

cheese he could not. Through this speech John smoked steadily on, till

the other stopped and looked at him for sympathy.

"Well, Jim, anyhow," said Smith, "thee hasn't got far to walk to the

job;" and he pointed with the stem of his pipe to the low roof of a

cottage just visible a few hundred yards distant.

"Ay, and a place it be to live in, that," said Jim. There were only two

rooms, he explained, and both downstairs--no upstairs at all--and the

first of these was so small he could reach across it, and the thatch had

got so thin in one place that the rain came through. The floor was only

hard mud, and the garden not big enough to grow a sack of potatoes,

while one wall of the house, which was only "wattle and daub" (_i.e._,

lath and plaster), rose up from the very edge of a great stagnant pond.

Overhead there was an elm, from the branches of which in wet weather

there was a perpetual drip, drip on the thatch, till the moss and grass

grew on the roof in profusion. All the sewage and drainage from the

cottage ran into the pond, over which at night there was almost always a

thick damp mist, which crept in through the crevices of the rotten

walls, and froze the blood in the sleepers' veins. Sometimes a flood

came down, and the pond rose and washed away the cabbages from the

garden, leaving a deposit of gritty sand which killed all vegetation,

and they could only keep the water from coming indoors by making a small

dam of clay across the doorway. There was only a low hedge of elder

between the cottage and a dirty lane; and in the night, especially if

there happened to be a light burning, it was common enough for a stone

to come through the window, flung by some half-drunken ploughboy. A

pretty place for a human being to live in: and again he looked up into

Smith's face for comment.

"Thee built 'un thee-self, didn't 'ee?" said John, in his slow way.

"Ay, that I did," continued Jim, not seeing the drift of the remark. He

not only built it, but he brought up nineteen children in it, and

fourteen of them lived to grow up, all the offspring of one wife. And a

time she had of it, too. None of them ever fell in that pond, though he

often wished they would; and they were all pretty healthy, which was a

bad thing, because it made them hungry, and if they had been ill the

parish would have kept them. All that he had done on 12s. a week, and he

minded the time when it was only 9s., ay, and even when it was 6s., and

'twas better then than it was now with 15s. That was before the Unions

came about, in the time of the old workhouses in every parish. Then the

farmers used to find everybody a job. Every morning they had to go round

from one farmer to the other, and if there was no work then they went to

the workhouse, or sometimes to the vestry-room in the church, where

every man had a loaf of bread for every head there was in his family, so

that the more children he had the more loaves of bread, which was a

capital thing when the children were small. He had known a man in those

times sent seven miles with a wheelbarrow to fetch a barrow load of coal

from the canal wharf, and then have to wheel it back seven miles, and

get one shilling for his day's work. Still they were better times than

these, because the farmers for their own sake were forced to find the

fellows something to do; but now they did not care, and it was a hard

thing to find work, especially when a man grew old, and stiff about the

joints. Now the Boards of Guardians would not give any relief unless the

applicants were ill, or not able-bodied, and even then they were often

required to break stones, and he was very much inclined to throw his

spade in that old pond and go to the Union with the "missis" and all the

lot for good. He had the rheumatism bad enough. It would serve them

right. He had worked "nigh handy" sixty years; and all he had got by it

he could put in his eye. They ought to keep him now. It was not half so

good as the old times for all the talk; then the children could bring

home a bit of wood out of the hedges to boil the pot with, but now they

must not touch a stick, or there was the law on them in a minute. And

then coal at the price it was. Why didn't his sons keep him? Where were

they? One was a soldier, and another had gone to America, and the third

was married and had a hard job to keep himself, and the fourth was gone

nobody knew where. As for the wenches, they were no good in that way. So

he and his "missis" muddled on at home with three of the youngest. And

they could not let them alone even in that. He did go into the Union

workhouse for a bit, a while ago, when the rheumatism was extraordinary

bad, but some of the guardians smelt out that he had a cottage of his

own, and it was against the law to relieve anybody that had property; so

he must pay back the relief as a loan or sell the cottage. He was

offered L25 for the place and garden, and he meant to have taken it, but

when they came to look into the writings it was not clear that he could

sell it. It was quit-rent land, and although the landlord had not taken

the rent for twenty years, yet he had entered it in his book as paid

(out of good nature), and the lawyers said it could not be done. But as

they would not let him sell it, he would not turn out, not he. There he

would stop--just to spite them. He knew that nook of his was wanted for

cattle stalls on the new principle, and very handy it would be with all

that water close at hand, but he had worked for sixty years, and had had

nineteen children there, and he would not turn out. Not he. The parson's

"missis" and the squire's "missis" came the other day about that

youngest boy of his. They wanted to get him into some school up in

London somewhere, but he remembered how the squire had served him just

for picking up a dead rabbit that laid in his path one hard snow time.

Six weeks in gaol because he could not pay the fine. And the parson

turned him out of his allotment because he saw him stagger a little in

the road one night with the rheumatism. It was a lie that he was drunk.

And suppose he was? The parson had his wine, he reckoned. They should

not have his boy. He rather hoped he would grow up a bad one, and bother

them well. He minded when that sharp old Miss ---- was always coming

round with tracts and blankets, like taking some straw to a lot of pigs,

and lecturing his "missis" about economy. What a fuss she made, and

scolded his wife as if she was a thief for having that fifteenth boy!

His "missis" turned on her at last, and said, "Lor, miss, that's all the

pleasure me an' my old man got." As for this talk about the labourers'

Unions, it was all very well for the young men; but it made it worse

still for the old ones. The farmers, if they had to give such a price,

would have young men in full strength: there was no chance at all for an

old fellow of sixty-four with rheumatism. Some of them, too, were

terribly offended--some of the old sort--and turned off the few

pensioners they had kept on at odd jobs for years. However, he supposed

he must get back to that ditch again.

This long oration was delivered not without a certain degree of power

and effect, showing that the man, whatever his faults, might with

training have become rather a clever fellow. The very way in which he

contradicted himself, and announced his intention of never doing that

which a moment before he was determined on, was not without an amount of

oratorical art, since the turn in his view of the subject was led up to

by a variety of reasons which were supposed to convince himself and his

hearer at the same time. His remarks were all the more effective because

there was an evident substratum of stern truth beneath them. But they

failed to make much impression on Smith, who saw his companion depart

without a word.

The fact was, that Smith was too well acquainted with the private life

of the orator. In his dull, dim way, he half recognised that the

unfortunate old fellow's evils had been in great part of his own

creating. He knew that he was far from faultless. That poaching

business--a very venial offence in a labourer's eyes--he knew had been a

serious one, a matter of some two-score pheasants and a desperate fight

with a gang. Looking at it as property, the squire had been merciful,

pleading with the magistrates for a mitigated penalty. The drunkenness

was habitual. In short, they were a bad lot--there was a name attached

to the whole family for thieving, poaching, drinking, and even worse.

Yet still there were two points that did sink deep into Smith's mind,

and made him pause several times that afternoon in his work. The first

was that long family of nineteen mouths, with the father and mother

making twenty-one. What a number of sins, in the rude logic of the

struggle for existence, that terrible fact glossed over! Who could

blame--what labourer at least could blame--the ragged, ill-clothed

children for taking the dead wood from the hedges to warm their naked

limbs? What labourer could blame the father for taking the hares and

rabbits running across his very path to fill that wretched hovel with

savoury steam from the pot? And further, what labourer could blame the

miserable old man for drowning his feelings, and his sensation of cold

and hunger, in liquor?

The great evil of these things is that a fellow-feeling will arise with

the wrong-doer, till the original distinction between right and wrong is

lost sight of entirely. John Smith had a family too. The other point was

the sixty years of labour and their fruit. After two generations of

hardest toil and rudest exposure, still dependent upon the seasons even

to permit him to work, when that work could be obtained. No rest, no

cosy fireside nook: still the bitter wind, and the half-frozen slime

and slush rising above the ankle. In an undefined way Smith had been

proud of his broad, enormous strength, and rocklike hardihood. He had

felt a certain rude pleasure in opening his broad chest to the winter

wind. But now he involuntarily closed his shirt and buttoned it. He did

not feel so confident in his own power of meeting all the contingencies

of the future.

Thought without method and without logical sequence is apt to press

heavily upon the uneducated mind. It was thus that these reflections

left a sensation of weight and discomfort upon Smith, and it was in a

worse humour than was common to his usually well-balanced organisation

that he hid away his tools under the bushes as the evening grew too dark

for work, and slowly paced homewards. He had some two miles to walk, and

he had long since begun to feel hungry. Plodding along in a heavy,

uneven gait, there overtook him a tall, raw young lad of eighteen or

twenty, slouching forward with vast strides and whistling merrily. The

lad slackened his steps and joined company!

"Where bist thee working now, then?" asked Smith.

He replied, evidently in high spirits, that he had that day got a job at

the new railway that was making. The wages were 18s. a week--3s. a

day--and he had heard that as soon as the men grew to understand their

work and to be a little skilful, they could get 24s. easily, up by

London. The only drawback was the long walk to the work. Lodgings close

at hand were very dear, as also was food, so dear as to lower the actual

receipts to an equality, if not below that of the agricultural labourer.

Four miles every morning and every night was the price he paid for 18s.

a week.

Smith began in his slow, dull way to reckon up his wages aloud against

this. First he had 13s. a week for his daily work. Then he had 1s. extra

for milking on Sundays, and two good meals with beer on that day. Every

week-day he had a pint of beer on finishing work. The young navvy had to

find his own liquor. His cottage, it was true, was his own (that is, he

only paid a low quit-rent of 1s. a year for it), so that that could not

be reckoned in as part of his earnings, as it could with many other

men. But the navvy's wages were the same all the year round, while his

in summer were often nearly double. As a stalwart mower he could earn

25s. a week and more, as a haymaker 18s., and at harvesting perhaps 30s.

If the season was good, and there was a press for hands, he would get

more. But, looking forward, there was no prospect of rising higher in

his trade, of getting higher wages for more skilful work. He could not

be more skilful than he was in ordinary farm work; and as yet the call

for clever men to attend to machinery, &c., was very limited; nor were

such a class of workmen usually drawn from the resident population where

improvements were introduced. The only hope of higher wages that was

held out to him was from the gradual rise of everything, or the forced

rise consequent upon agitation. But, said he, the navvy must follow his

work from place to place, and lodgings are dear in the towns, and the

farmers in country places will not let their cottages except to their

own labourers--how was the navvy even with higher wages to keep a wife?

The aspiring young fellow beside him replied at once sharply and

decisively, that he did not mean to have a wife, leastways not till he

had got his regular 30s. a week, which he might in time. Then John Smith

made a noise in his chest like a grunt.

They parted after this. Smith went into the farmhouse, and got his pint

of beer, drinking it in one long slow draught, and then made his way

through the scattered village to his cottage. There was a frown on his

forehead as he lifted the latch of the long low thatched building which

was his home.

The flickering light of the fire on the hearth, throwing great shadows

as it blazed up and fell, dazed his eyes as he stepped in, and he did

not notice a line stretched right across the room on which small

articles of clothing were hanging to dry in a row. A damp worsted

stocking flapped against his face, and his foot stumbled on the uneven

flag stones which formed the floor. He sat down silently upon a

three-legged stool--an old milking-stool--and, putting his hands on his

knees, stared into the fire. It was formed of a few sticks with just one

knob of coal balanced on the top of them, evident care having been

taken that not a jot of its precious heat should be lost. A great black

pot with open lid swung over it, from which rose a slight steam and a

bubbling noise; and this huge, gaunt, bareboned, hungry man, looking

into it, saw a large raw swede, just as from the field, with only the

greens cut off, simmering for his supper. That root in its day of life

had been fed well with superphosphate, and flourished exceedingly, till

now its globe could hardly go into the pot. Down the low chimney there

came the monotonous growl of the bitter winter wind, and a few spots of

rain fell hissing on the embers.

"Is this all thee has got?" he asked, turning to a woman who was busied

with some more damp clothes in a basket.

She faced round quickly--a short, narrow, meagre creature, flat-chested

and square-shouldered, whose face was the hue of light-coloured clay, an

almost corpse-like complexion. Her thin lips hissed out, "Ay, if thee

takes thee money to the pothouse thee won't get bacon for supper."

Smith said nothing in reply, but stared again into the fire.

The children's voices, which had lowered the moment there seemed a

coming quarrel between their parents, rose again. There were three of

them--the youngest four, the eldest seven--playing on the stone flags of

the floor, between whose rough edges there were wide crevices of

hardened mud. With a few short sticks and a broken piece of earthenware

for toys, they were happy in their way. Whatever their food might have

been, they showed no traces of hard usage. Their red "puddy" fists were

fat, and their naked legs round and plump enough. Their faces were full

and rosy, and their voices clear and anything but querulous. The eager

passions of childhood come out fierce and unrestrained, and blows were

freely interchanged, without, however, either cries or apparent hatred.

Their naked knees were on the stone-flags, and the wind, creeping in a

draught under the ill-fitting door, blew their ragged clothes about.

"Thee med well look at 'em, John," said the woman, seeing Smith cast a

sideway glance at the children; and rapidly manipulating the clothing,

her thin nervous lips poured forth a torrent of words upon the silent

man. They had had nothing but bread that day, and nothing but bread and

lard the day before, and now the lard was gone, and the baker would not

trust any more. There were no potatoes because the disease had destroyed

them, and the cabbages were sold for that bit of coal; and as for the

swede, she took it out of Mr. ----'s field, and he was a cross-grained

man, and who knew but what they might have the constable on them before

morning? Jane W. and Sarah Y. went to prison for seven days for stealing

swedes. All along of that cursed drink. If she were the squire she'd

shut up all the pothouses in the county. The men went there, and drank

the very shirts off their backs, and the clothes off their children, ay,

and the shoes off their feet; and what was the use of their having more

money when it only went into the publican's pocket? There they sat, and

drank the bread out of the babies' mouths. As for the women, the most of

them, poor things, never tasted beer from one year's end to another. Old

Carter handed her a pint that day, and when she tasted it she did not

know what it was. He might smile, but it was true though: no more did

Jane W. and Sally Y.: they did not know what it tasted like. And yet

they had to be out in the fields at work at eight o'clock, and their

washing to do before that, and perhaps a baby in their arms, and the tea

as weak as water, and no sugar. Milk, they could not get milk for

money--he knew that very well; all the milk went to London. A precious

lot of good the higher wages had done them. The farmers would not let

them have a drop of milk or a scrap of victuals, and talked about rising

the price of the allotment grounds. Allotment, did she say? and how did

he lose his allotment?--didn't he drink, drink, drink, till he had to

hand over his allotment to the landlord of the pothouse, and did not

they take it away from both as soon as they heard of it? Served him

right. They had not got a pound of potatoes, and the children did use to

lick up the potato-pot liquor as if they liked it.

Smith asked where Polly was, but that was only a signal for a fresh

outburst. Polly, if he'd a looked after her she would have been all

right. (Smith turned a sharp glance at her in some alarm at this.)

Letting a great girl like that go about at night by herself while he

was a drink, drink, drinking, and there she was now, the bad hussy, gone

to the workhouse to lie in. (Smith winced.) _She_ never disgraced

herself like that; and if he had sent the wench to service, or stopped

her going down to that pothouse with the fellows, this would not have

happened. She always told him how it would end. He was a

good-for-nothing, drunken brute of a man, and had brought her to all

this misery; and she began sobbing.

After twelve long hours of toil, including the walk to and fro, exposed

to the bitter cold, with but a slice of cheese to support the strength

of that brawny chest, this welcome to his supper was more than the

sturdy, silent man could bear. With a dull remembrance of the happy

sunlit summer, twenty years ago, when Martha was a plump, laughing girl,

of sloe-black eyes and nut-brown complexion--with a glimpse of that

merry courting time passing across his mind, Smith got up and walked out

into the dark rainy night. "Ay, thee bist agoing to the liquor again,"

were the last words he heard as he shut the door.

It was too true. But what labourer, let us ask, with a full conception

of the circumstances, would blame him? Here there was nothing but hard

and scanty fare, no heat, no light, nothing to cheer the heart, nothing

to cause it to forget the toil of the day and the thought of the morrow,

no generous liquor sung by poets to warm the physical man. But only a

few yards farther down the road there was a great house, with its

shutters cosily closed, ablaze with heat and light, echoing with merry

laughter and song. There was an array of good fellows ready to welcome

him, to tell him the news, to listen eagerly to what he could tell them,

to ask him to drink, and to drink from his cup in boon companionship.

There was a social circle in which his heart and intellect could expand,

at least for a while, till the strong liquor mounted up and overcame his

brain; and then, even then, there was the forgetfulness, the deep

slumber of intoxication, utterly oblivious of all things--perhaps the

greatest pleasure of all. Smith went there, and who of his own class

would blame him? And if his own class did not, of what use is it for

other and higher classes to preach morality to him? It is a man's own

comrades, his own class, whose opinions he dreads and conforms to. If

they condemned him for going there, he would avoid the public-house. But

they would have called him a fool if he avoided it. In their logic who

could say they were wrong? A man who is happy is a long while getting

drunk, he talks as much as he drinks; but Smith was dull and silent, and

drank steadily. It was not late, but when the house closed he could but

just keep his feet. In the thick darkness and the driving rain he

staggered on, unconscious of the road he was taking, but bearing roughly

towards home. The cold air rather more stupefied him than brought him to

himself. Insensibly he wandered with uncertain steps down a lane which

led by a gentle slope out into the fields, the fall of the ground

guiding his footsteps, and then stumbling over the root of an ash-tree,

fell heavily on the wet grass. His eyes, half-shut before, closed as if

by clockwork, and in a moment he was firm asleep. His hat had fallen

from his brow, and the grizzled hair was blown about by the wind as it

came in gusts through the hedge. His body was a little sheltered by the

tree, but his chest was open and bare half-way down his waistcoat; and

the heavy drops fell from the boughs of the ash on his stalwart neck,

gradually saturating his shirt. It may have been that the cold numbed

him and rendered him more insensible than he otherwise would have been.

No star shone out that night; all was darkness, clouds, and rain till

the dawn broke.

Soon after dawn, the young navvy, going to his work by a short cut,

found Smith still asleep, and shook him till he got up. He was stupid

beyond all power of words to express; but at last came to a dim idea

that he must get home. Then the young navvy left him, anxious about

being late at his employment, and John Smith slowly _felt_ his way to

his own door. His wife, already up, opened it. "Thee varmint! thee never

gi'ed I that shilling last night for the baker." Smith felt hopelessly

in his pocket, and then looked at her vacantly. "Thee drunken, nasty

old----," said the infuriated woman, almost unconsciously lifting her

hand. Perhaps it was that action of hers which suggested the same to his

mind, which was in a mechanical state. Perhaps the stinging words of

last night had at last sunk deep enough to scarify his self-esteem.

Perhaps he did not at that moment fully remember the strength of his own

mighty arm. But he struck her, and she fell. Her forehead came in

contact with the cradle, in which the youngest boy was sleeping, and

woke him with a cry. She lay quite still. Smith sat stupidly down on the

old milking-stool, with his elbows on his knees. The shrill voice of his

wife, as she met him at the door, had brought more than one female

neighbour to the window; they saw what happened, and they were there in

a minute. Martha was only insensible, and they soon brought her to, but

the mark on the temple remained.

Five days afterwards John Smith, agricultural labourer, aged forty-five,

stood in the dock to answer a charge of assaulting his wife. There were

five magistrates on the Bench--two large landowners, a baronet in the

chair, and two clergymen. Martha Smith hung her head as they placed her

in the witness-box, and tried to evade kissing the Book, but the police

saw that that formality was complied with. The Clerk asked her what she

had to complain of. No answer. "Come, tell us all about it," said the

eldest of the magistrates in a fatherly tone of voice. Still silence.

"Well, how did you get that mark on your forehead?" asked the Clerk. No

answer. "Speak up!" cried a shrill voice in the body of the court. It

was one of Martha's cronies, who was immediately silenced by the police;

but the train had been fired. Martha would not fail before another

woman. But she did not commence about the assault. It was the drink she

spoke of, nothing but the drink; and as she talked of that she warmed

with her subject and her grievances, and forgot the old love for her

husband, and her former hesitation, and placed that vice in all its

naked deformity and hideous results in plain but burning words before

the Bench. Had she been the cleverest advocate she could not have

prepared the ground for her case better. This tale of drink predisposed

their minds against the defendant. Only the Clerk, wedded to legal

forms, fidgeted under this eloquence, and seized the first pause: "But

now, how about the assault? Come to that," he said sharply. "I'm coming,

sir," said Martha; and she described Smith coming home, stupid and

ferocious, after staying out all night, and felling her to the ground

because she asked him for a shilling to buy the children's daily bread.

Then she pointed to the bruise on her forehead, and a suppressed murmur

of indignation ran through the Court, and angry looks were directed at

the defendant. Did she do or say anything to provoke the blow? asked the

Chairman. No more than to ask for the shilling. Did she not abuse him?

Well, yes, she did; she owned she did call him a drunken brute

afterwards; she could not help it. These women, with their rapid

tongues, have a terrible advantage over the slower-witted men.

Had the defendant any questions to ask his wife? Smith began to say that

he was very sorry, sir, but the Clerk snapped him up short. "That's your

defence. Have you any questions? No; well, call your witnesses." Martha

called her witnesses, the women living next door. They did not do her

case much good; they were too evidently eager to obtain the defendant's

condemnation. But, on the other hand, they did not do it any harm, for

in the main it was easy to see that they really corroborated her

statements. Smith asked them no questions; the labouring class rarely

understand the object of cross-questioning. If asked to do so they

almost invariably begin to tell their own tale.

"Now, then," said the Clerk, "what have you got to say for

yourself--what's your defence?" Smith looked down and stammered

something. He was confused; they checked him from telling his story when

his mouth was full of language, now it would not come. He did not know

but that if he began he might be checked again. The eldest magistrate on

the Bench saw his embarrassment, and, willing to assist him, spoke as

kindly as he could under the circumstances. "Speak up, John; tell us all

about it. I am sorry to see you there." "He's the finest, most stalwart

man in my parish," he continued, turning to the Chairman. Thus

encouraged, John got out a word or two. He was very sorry; he did not

mean to hurt her; he knew he was tipsy, and 'twas his own fault; she had

been a good wife to him; she asked him for money. Then all of a sudden

John drew up his form to his full height, and his chest swelled out,

and he spoke in his own strong voice clearly now that he had got a topic

apart from his disgrace. These were his words, a little softened into

more civilised pronunciation to make them intelligible:--

"She asked I for money, she did, and what was I to gi'e her? I hadn't a

got a shilling nor a sixpence, and she knew it, and knowed that I

couldn't get one either till Saturday night. I gets thirteen shillings a

week from Master H., and a shilling on Sundays, and I hev got five

children and a wife to keep out of that--that's two shillings a week for

each on us, that's just threepence halfpenny a day, look 'ee, sir. And

what victuals be I to buy wi' that, let alone beer? and a man can't do

no work wi'out a quart a day, and that's fourpence, and there's my

share, look 'ee, gone at onst. Wur be I to get any victuals, and wur be

I to get any clothes an' boots, I should like for to know? And Jack he

gets big and wants a main lot, and so did Polly, but her's gone to the

work'us', wuss luck. And parson wants I to send the young 'uns to

school, and pay a penny a week for 'em, and missis she wants a bit o'

bacon in the house and a loaf, and what good is that of, among all we?

I gets a slice of bacon twice a week, and sometimes narn. And beer--I

knows I drinks beer, and more as I ought, but what's a chap to do when

he's a'most shrammed wi' cold, and nar a bit o' nothin' in the pot but

an old yeller swede as hard as wood? And my teeth bean't as good as 'em

used to be. I knows I drinks beer, and so would anybody in my place--it

makes me kinder stupid, as I don't feel nothing then. Wot's the

good--I've worked this thirty year or more, since I wur big enough to go

with the plough, and I've a knowed they as have worked for nigh handy

sixty, and wot do 'em get for it? All he'd a got wur the rheumatiz. Yer

med as well drink while 'ee can. I never meaned to hurt her, and her

knows it; and if it wurn't for a parcel of women a-shoving on her on,

her would never a come here agen me. I knows I drinks, and what else be

I to do? I can't work allus."

"But what are you going to say in your defence--do you say she provoked

you or anything?" asked the Clerk.

"No, I don't know as she provoked I. I wur provoked, though, I wur. I

don't bear no malice agen she. I ain't a got nothin' more for to say."

The magistrates retired, and the Chairman, on returning, said that this

was a most brutal and unprovoked assault, made all the worse by the

previous drinking habits of the defendant. If it had not been for the

good character he bore generally speaking (here he looked towards the

elder magistrate, who had evidently said a word in Smith's behalf), he

would have had a month's imprisonment, or more. As it was, he was

committed for a fortnight, and to pay the costs, or seven additional

days; and he hoped this would be a warning to him.

The elder magistrate looked at John Smith, and saw his jaw set firmly,

and his brow contract, and his heart was moved towards him.

"Cannot you get better wages than that, John?" he said. "At the railway

they would give you eighteen or twenty."

"It's so far to walk, sir, and my legs bean't as lissom as they used to

be."

"But take the missis and live there."

"Lodgings is too dear, sir."

"Ah, exactly. Still I don't see how the farmers could pay you more.

I'll see what can be done for you."

Smith was led from the dock to the cell. The expenses were paid by an

unknown hand; but he underwent his fortnight's imprisonment. His wife

and children, with an empty larder, were obliged to go to the workhouse,

where also his daughter was at the same time confined of an illegitimate

child. This is no fiction, but an uncompromising picture of things as

they are. Who is to blame for them?

_WILTSHIRE LABOURERS._

LETTER I.

(_To the Editor of the "Times."_)

SIR,--The Wiltshire agricultural labourer is not so highly paid as those

of Northumberland, nor so low as those of Dorset; but in the amount of

his wages, as in intelligence and general position, he may fairly be

taken as an average specimen of his class throughout a large portion of

the kingdom.

As a man, he is usually strongly built, broad-shouldered, and massive in

frame, but his appearance is spoilt by the clumsiness of his walk and

the want of grace in his movements. Though quite as large in muscle, it

is very doubtful if he possesses the strength of the seamen who may be

seen lounging about the ports. There is a want of firmness, a certain

disjointed style, about his limbs, and the muscles themselves have not

the hardness and tension of the sailor's. The labourer's muscle is that

of a cart-horse, his motions lumbering and slow. His style of walk is

caused by following the plough in early childhood, when the weak limbs

find it a hard labour to pull the heavy nailed boots from the thick clay

soil. Ever afterwards he walks as if it were an exertion to lift his

legs. His food may, perhaps, have something to do with the deadened

slowness which seems to pervade everything he does--there seems a lack

of vitality about him. It consists chiefly of bread and cheese, with

bacon twice or thrice a week, varied with onions, and if he be a milker

(on some farms) with a good "tuck-out" at his employer's expense on

Sundays. On ordinary days he dines at the fashionable hour of six or

seven in the evening--that is, about that time his cottage scents the

road with a powerful odour of boiled cabbage, of which he eats an

immense quantity. Vegetables are his luxuries, and a large garden,

therefore, is the greatest blessing he can have. He eats huge onions

raw; he has no idea of flavouring his food with them, nor of making

those savoury and inviting messes or vegetable soups at which the French

peasantry are so clever. In Picardy I have often dined in a peasant's

cottage, and thoroughly enjoyed the excellent soup he puts upon the

table for his ordinary meal. To dine in an English labourer's cottage

would be impossible. His bread is generally good, certainly; but his

bacon is the cheapest he can buy at small second-class shops--oily,

soft, wretched stuff; his vegetables are cooked in detestable style, and

eaten saturated with the pot liquor. Pot liquor is a favourite soup. I

have known cottagers actually apply at farmers' kitchens not only for

the pot liquor in which meat has been soddened, but for the water in

which potatoes have been boiled--potato liquor--and sup it up with

avidity. And this not in times of dearth or scarcity, but rather as a

relish. They never buy anything but bacon; never butchers' meat.

Philanthropic ladies, to my knowledge, have demonstrated over and over

again even to their limited capacities that certain parts of butchers'

meat can be bought just as cheap, and will make more savoury and

nutritive food; and even now, with the present high price of meat, a

certain proportion would be advantageous. In vain; the labourers

obstinately adhere to the pig, and the pig only. When, however, an

opportunity does occur the amount of food they will eat is something

astonishing. Once a year, at the village club dinner, they gormandise to

repletion. In one instance I knew of a man eating a plate of roast beef

(and the slices are cut enormously thick at these dinners), a plate of

boiled beef, then another of boiled mutton, and then a fourth of roast

mutton, and a fifth of ham. He said he could not do much to the bread

and cheese; but didn't he go into the pudding! I have even heard of men

stuffing to the fullest extent of their powers, and then retiring from

the table to take an emetic of mustard and return to a second gorging.

There is scarcely any limit to their power of absorbing beer. I have

known reapers and mowers make it their boast that they could lie on

their backs and never take the wooden bottle (in the shape of a small

barrel) from their lips till they had drunk a gallon, and from the feats

I have seen I verily believe it a fact. The beer they get is usually

poor and thin, though sometimes in harvest the farmers bring out a taste

of strong liquor, but not till the work is nearly over; for from this

very practice of drinking enormous quantities of small beer the labourer

cannot drink more than a very limited amount of good liquor without

getting tipsy. This is why he so speedily gets inebriated at the

alehouse. While mowing and reaping many of them lay in a small cask.

They are much better clothed now than formerly. Corduroy trousers and

slops are the usual style. Smock-frocks are going out of use, except for

milkers and faggers. Almost every labourer has his Sunday suit, very

often really good clothes, sometimes glossy black, with the regulation

"chimneypot." His unfortunate walk betrays him, dress how he will. Since

labour has become so expensive it has become a common remark among the

farmers that the labourer will go to church in broadcloth and the

masters in smock-frocks. The labourer never wears gloves--that has to

come with the march of the times; but he is particularly choice over

his necktie. The women must dress in the fashion. A very respectable

draper in an agricultural district was complaining to me the other day

that the poorest class of women would have everything in the fashionable

style, let it change as often as it would. In former times, if he laid

in a stock of goods suited to tradesmen, and farmers' wives and

daughters, if the fashion changed, or they got out of date, he could

dispose of them easily to the servants. Now no such thing. The quality

did not matter so much, but the style must be the style of the day--no

sale for remnants. The poorest girl, who had not got two yards of

flannel on her back, must have the same style of dress as the squire's

daughter--Dolly Vardens, chignons, and parasols for ladies who can work

all day reaping in the broiling sun of August! Gloves, kid, for hands

that milk the cows!

The cottages now are infinitely better than they were. There is scarcely

room for further improvement in the cottages now erected upon estates.

They have three bedrooms, and every appliance and comfort compatible

with their necessarily small size. It is only the cottages erected by

the labourers themselves on waste plots of ground which are open to

objection. Those he builds himself are, indeed, as a rule, miserable

huts, disgraceful to a Christian country. I have an instance before me

at this moment where a man built a cottage with two rooms and no

staircase or upper apartments, and in those two rooms eight persons

lived and slept--himself and wife, grown-up daughters, and children.

There was not a scrap of garden attached, not enough to grow

half-a-dozen onions. The refuse and sewage was flung into the road, or

filtered down a ditch into the brook which supplied that part of the

village with water. In another case at one time there was a cottage in

which twelve persons lived. This had upper apartments, but so low was

the ceiling that a tall man could stand on the floor, with his head

right through the opening for the staircase, and see along the upper

floor under the beds! These squatters are the curse of the community. It

is among them that fever and kindred infectious diseases break out; it

is among them that wretched couples are seen bent double with

rheumatism and affections of the joints caused by damp. They have often

been known to remain so long, generation after generation, in these

wretched hovels, that at last the lord of the manor, having neglected to

claim quit-rent, they can defy him, and claim them as their own

property, and there they stick, eyesores and blots, the fungi of the

land. The cottages erected by farmers or by landlords are now, one and

all, fit and proper habitations for human beings; and I verily believe

it would be impossible throughout the length and breadth of Wiltshire to

find a single bad cottage on any large estate, so well and so thoroughly

have the landed proprietors done their work. On all farms gardens are

attached to the cottages, in many instances very large, and always

sufficient to produce enough vegetables for the resident. In villages

the allotment system has been greatly extended of late years, and has

been found most beneficial, both to owners and tenants. As a rule the

allotments are let at a rate which may be taken as L4 per annum--a sum

which pays the landlord very well, and enables the labourer to

remunerate himself. In one village which came under my observation the

clergyman of the parish has turned a portion of his glebe land into

allotments--a most excellent and noble example, which cannot be too

widely followed or too much extolled. He is thus enabled to benefit

almost every one of his poor parishioners, and yet without destroying

that sense of independence which is the great characteristic of a true

Englishman. He has issued a book of rules and conditions under which

these allotments are held, and he thus places a strong check upon

drunkenness and dissolute habits, indulgence in which is a sure way to

lose the portions of ground. There is scarcely an end to the benefits of

the allotment system. In villages there cannot be extensive gardens, and

the allotments supply their place. The extra produce above that which

supplies the table and pays the rent is easily disposed of in the next

town, and places many additional comforts in the labourer's reach. The

refuse goes to help support and fatten the labourer's pig, which brings

him in profit enough to pay the rent of his cottage, and the pig, in

turn, manures the allotment. Some towns have large common lands, held

under certain conditions; such are Malmesbury, with 500 acres, and

Tetbury (the common land of which extends two miles), both these being

arable, &c. These are not exactly in the use of labourers, but they are

in the hands of a class to which the labourer often rises. Many

labourers have fruit-trees in their gardens, which, in some seasons,

prove very profitable. In the present year, to my knowledge, a labourer

sold L4 worth of apples; and another made L3, 10s. off the produce of

one pear-tree, pears being scarce.

To come at last to the difficult question of wages. In Wiltshire there

has been no extended strike, and very few meetings upon the subject, for

the simple reason that the agitators can gain no hold upon a county

where, as a mass, the labourers are well paid. The common day-labourer

receives 10s., 11s., and 12s. a week, according to the state of supply

and demand for labour in various districts; and, if he milks, 1s. more,

making 13s. a week, now common wages. These figures are rather below the

mark; I could give instances of much higher pay. To give a good idea of

the wages paid I will take the case of a hill farmer (arable,

Marlborough Downs), who paid this last summer during harvest 18s. per

week per man. His reapers often earned 10s. a day--enough to pay their

year's rent in a week. These men lived in cottages on the farm, with

three bedrooms each, and some larger, with every modern appliance, each

having a garden of a quarter of an acre attached and close at hand, for

which cottage and garden they paid 1s. per week rent. The whole of these

cottages were insured by the farmer himself, their furniture, &c., in

one lump, and the insurance policy cost him, as nearly as possible, 1s.

3d. per cottage per year. For this he deducted 1s. per year each from

their wages. None of the men would have insured unless he had insisted

upon doing it for them. These men had from six to eight quarts of beer

per man (over and above their 18s. a week) during harvest every day. In

spring and autumn their wages are much increased by piece-work, hoeing,

&c. In winter the farmer draws their coal for them in his waggons, a

distance of eight miles from the nearest wharf, enabling them to get it

at cost price. This is no slight advantage, for, at the present high

price of coal, it is sold, delivered in the villages, at 2s. per cwt.

Many who cannot afford it in the week buy a quarter of a cwt. on

Saturday night, to cook their Sunday's dinner with, for 6d. This is at

the rate of L2 per ton. Another gentleman, a large steam cultivator in

the Vale, whose name is often before the public, informs me that his

books show that he paid L100 in one year in cash to one cottage for

labour, showing the advantage the labourer possesses over the mechanic,

since his wife and child can add to his income. Many farmers pay L50 and

L60 a year for beer drunk by their labourers--a serious addition to

their wages. The railway companies and others who employ mechanics, do

not allow them any beer. The allowance of a good cottage and a quarter

of an acre of garden for 1s. per week is not singular. Many who were at

the Autumn Manoeuvres of the present year may remember having a

handsome row of houses, rather than cottages, pointed out to them as

inhabited by labourers at 1s. per week. In the immediate neighbourhood

of large manufacturing towns 1s. 6d. a week is sometimes paid; but then

these cottages would in such positions readily let to mechanics for 3s.,

4s., and even 5s. per week. There was a great outcry when the Duke of

Marlborough issued an order that the cottages on his estate should in

future only be let to such men as worked upon the farms where those

cottages were situated. In reality this was the very greatest blessing

the Duke could have conferred upon the agricultural labourer; for it

ensured him a good cottage at a nearly nominal rent and close to his

work; whereas in many instances previously the cottages on the farms had

been let at a high rate to the mechanics, and the labourer had to walk

miles before he got to his labour. Cottages are not erected by

landowners or by farmers as paying speculations. It is well known that

the condition of things prevents the agricultural labourer from being

able to pay a sufficient rent to be a fair percentage upon the sum

expended. In one instance a landlord has built some cottages for his

tenant, the tenant paying a certain amount of interest on the sum

invested by the landlord. Now, although this is a matter of

arrangement, and not of speculation--that is, although the interest paid

by the tenant is a low percentage upon the money laid out, yet the rent

paid by the labourers inhabiting these cottages to the tenant does not

reimburse him what he pays his landlord as interest--not by a

considerable margin. But then he has the advantage of his labourers

close to his work, always ready at hand.

Over and above the actual cash wages of the labourer, which are now very

good, must be reckoned his cottage and garden, and often a small

orchard, at a nominal rent, his beer at his master's expense,

piece-work, gleaning after harvest, &c., which alter his real position

very materially. In Gloucestershire, on the Cotswolds, the best-paid

labourers are the shepherds, for in that great sheep-country much trust

is reposed in them. At the annual auctions of shearlings which are held

upon the large farms a purse is made for the shepherd of the flock, into

which every one who attends is expected to drop a shilling, often

producing L5. The shepherds on the Wiltshire downs are also well paid,

especially in lambing-time, when the greatest watchfulness and care are

required. It has been stated that the labourer has no chance of rising

from his position. This is sheer cant. He has very good opportunities of

rising, and often does rise, to my knowledge. At this present moment I

could mention a person who has risen from a position scarcely equal to

that of a labourer, not only to have a farm himself, but to place his

sons in farms. Another has just entered on a farm; and several more are

on the highroad to that desirable consummation. If a labourer possesses

any amount of intelligence he becomes head-carter or head-fagger, as the

case may be; and from that to be assistant or under-bailiff, and finally

bailiff. As a bailiff he has every opportunity to learn the working of a

farm, and is often placed in entire charge of a farm at a distance from

his employer's residence. In time he establishes a reputation as a

practical man, and being in receipt of good wages, with very little

expenditure, saves some money. He has now little difficulty in obtaining

the promise of a farm, and with this can readily take up money. With

average care he is a made man. Others rise from petty trading, petty

dealing in pigs and calves, till they save sufficient to rent a small

farm, and make that the basis of larger dealing operations. I question

very much whether a clerk in a firm would not find it much more

difficult, as requiring larger capital, to raise himself to a level with

his employer than an agricultural labourer does to the level of a

farmer.

Many labourers now wander far and wide as navvies, &c., and perhaps when

these return home, as most of them do, to agricultural labour, they are

the most useful and intelligent of their class, from a readiness they

possess to turn their hand to anything. I know one at this moment who

makes a large addition to his ordinary wages by brewing for the small

inns, and very good liquor he brews, too. They pick up a large amount of

practical knowledge.

The agricultural women are certainly not handsome; I know no peasantry

so entirely uninviting. Occasionally there is a girl whose nut-brown

complexion and sloe-black eyes are pretty, but their features are very

rarely good, and they get plain quickly, so soon as the first flush of

youth is past. Many have really good hair in abundance, glossy and rich,

perhaps from its exposure to the fresh air. But on Sundays they plaster

it with strong-smelling pomade and hair-oil, which scents the air for

yards most unpleasantly. As a rule, it may safely be laid down that the

agricultural women are moral, far more so than those of the town. Rough

and rude jokes and language are, indeed, too common; but that is all. No

evil comes of it. The fairs are the chief cause of immorality. Many an

honest, hard-working servant-girl owes her ruin to these fatal mops and

fairs, when liquor to which she is unaccustomed overcomes her. Yet it

seems cruel to take from them the one day or two of the year on which

they can enjoy themselves fairly in their own fashion. The spread of

friendly societies, patronised by the gentry and clergy, with their

annual festivities, is a remedy which is gradually supplying them with

safer, and yet congenial, amusement. In what may be termed lesser morals

I cannot accord either them or the men the same praise. They are too

ungrateful for the many great benefits which are bountifully supplied

them--the brandy, the soup, and fresh meat readily extended without

stint from the farmer's home in sickness to the cottage are too quickly

forgotten. They who were most benefited are often the first to most

loudly complain and to backbite. Never once in all my observation have I

heard a labouring man or woman make a grateful remark; and yet I can

confidently say that there is no class of persons in England who receive

so many attentions and benefits from their superiors as the agricultural

labourers. Stories are rife of their even refusing to work at disastrous

fires because beer was not immediately forthcoming. I trust this is not

true; but it is too much in character. No term is too strong in

condemnation for those persons who endeavour to arouse an agitation

among a class of people so short-sighted and so ready to turn against

their own benefactors and their own interest. I am credibly informed

that one of these agitators, immediately after the Bishop of

Gloucester's unfortunate but harmlessly intended speech at the

Gloucester Agricultural Society's dinner--one of these agitators mounted

a platform at a village meeting and in plain language incited and

advised the labourers to duck the farmers! The agricultural women either

go out to field-work or become indoor servants. In harvest they

hay-make--chiefly light work, as raking--and reap, which is much harder

labour; but then, while reaping they work their own time, as it is done

by the piece. Significantly enough, they make longer hours while

reaping. They are notoriously late to arrive, and eager to return home,

on the hay-field. The children help both in haymaking and reaping. In

spring and autumn they hoe and do other piece-work. On pasture farms

they beat clots or pick up stones out of the way of the mowers' scythes.

Occasionally, but rarely now, they milk. In winter they wear gaiters,

which give the ankles a most ungainly appearance. Those who go out to

service get very low wages at first from their extreme awkwardness, but

generally quickly rise. As dairymaids they get very good wages indeed.

Dairymaids are scarce and valuable. A dairymaid who can be trusted to

take charge of a dairy will sometimes get L20 besides her board

(liberal) and sundry perquisites. These often save money, marry

bailiffs, and help their husbands to start a farm.

In the education provided for children Wiltshire compares favourably

with other counties. Long before the passing of the recent Act in

reference to education the clergy had established schools in almost

every parish, and their exertions have enabled the greater number of

places to come up to the standard required by the Act, without the

assistance of a School Board. The great difficulty is the distance

children have to walk to school, from the sparseness of population and

the number of outlying hamlets. This difficulty is felt equally by the

farmers, who, in the majority of cases, find themselves situated far

from a good school. In only one place has anything like a cry for

education arisen, and that is on the extreme northern edge of the

county. The Vice-Chairman of the Swindon Chamber of Agriculture recently

stated that only one-half of the entire population of Inglesham could

read and write. It subsequently appeared that the parish of Inglesham

was very sparsely populated, and that a variety of circumstances had

prevented vigorous efforts being made. The children, however, could

attend schools in adjoining parishes, not farther than two miles, a

distance which they frequently walk in other parts of the country.

Those who are so ready to cast every blame upon the farmer, and to

represent him as eating up the earnings of his men and enriching himself

with their ill-paid labour, should remember that farming, as a rule, is

carried on with a large amount of borrowed capital. In these days, when

L6 an acre has been expended in growing roots for sheep, when the

slightest derangement of calculation in the price of wool, meat, or

corn, or the loss of a crop, seriously interferes with a fair return for

capital invested, the farmer has to sail extremely close to the wind,

and only a little more would find his canvas shaking. It was only

recently that the cashier of the principal bank of an agricultural

county, after an unprosperous year, declared that such another season

would make almost every farmer insolvent. Under these circumstances it

is really to be wondered at that they have done as much as they have for

the labourer in the last few years, finding him with better cottages,

better wages, better education, and affording him better opportunities

of rising in the social scale.--I am, Sir, faithfully yours,

RICHARD JEFFERIES.

COATE FARM, SWINDON, _Nov. 12, 1872._

Lord Shaftesbury, in the _Times_, Dec. 6th, says:--

"It is our duty and our interest to elevate the present condition of the

labourer, and to enable him to assert and enjoy every one of his rights.

But I must agree with Mr. Jefferies that, even under the actual system

of things, numerous instances have occurred of a rise in the social

scale as the result of temperance, good conduct, and economy. He has

furnished some examples. I will give only one from my own estate:--'T.

M. was for many years shepherd to Farmer P----; he bought with his

savings a small leasehold property at ---- for L170, and he had

accumulated L100 besides. He had brought up a son and three daughters,

and his son now occupies the leasehold.' This is the statement as given

to me in writing."

LETTER II.

(_To the Editor of the "Times."_)

SIR,--I did not intend to make any reply to the numerous attacks made

upon my letter published in the _Times_ of the 14th inst., but the

statements made by "The Son of a Wiltshire Labourer" are such as I feel

bound to resent on the part of the farmers of this county.

He says he wishes the landed proprietors would take as much care to

provide cottages for their labourers as I represent them as doing. I

repeat what I said, that the cottages on large estates are now, one and

all, fit habitations for human beings. The Duke of Marlborough is a

large proprietor of cottages in this neighbourhood, and his plan has

been, whenever a cottage did not appear sufficiently commodious, to

throw two into one. The owner of the largest estate near Swindon has

been engaged for many years past in removing the old thatched mud

hovels, and replacing them with substantial, roomy, and slate-roofed

buildings. Farmers are invariably anxious to have good cottages. There

is a reluctance to destroy the existing ones, both from the

inconvenience and the uncertainty sometimes of others being erected.

Often, too, the poor have the strongest attachment to the cabin in which

they were born and bred, and would strongly resent its destruction,

though obviously for their good. Farmers never build bad cottages now.

When a tenement falls in, either from decay or the death of the tenant,

the cottage which is erected on its site is invariably a good one. A row

of splendid cottages has recently been erected at Wanborough. They are

very large, with extensive gardens attached. Some even begin to complain

that the cottages now erected are in a sense "too good" for the purpose.

The system of three bedrooms is undoubtedly the best from a sanitary

point of view, but it is a question whether the widespread belief in

that system, and that system alone, has not actually retarded the

erection of reasonably good buildings. It is that third bedroom which

just prevents the investment of building a cottage from paying a

remunerative percentage on the capital expended. Two bedrooms are easily

made--the third puzzles the builder where to put it with due regard to

economy. Nor is a third bedroom always required. Out of ten families

perhaps only two require a third bedroom; in this way there is a large

waste in erecting a row. It has been suggested that a row should consist

of so many cottages with two bedrooms only for families who do not want

more, and at each end a building with three bedrooms for larger

families. In one instance two cottages were ordered to be erected on an

estate, the estimate for which was L640; these when completed might have

let for L10 per annum, or 1-3/4 per cent, on the capital invested! The

plans for these cottages had so many dormer windows, porches,

intricacies of design in variegated tiles, &c., that the contractor gave

it up as a bad job. I mention this to show that the tendency to build

good cottages has gone even beyond what was really required, and

ornamentation is added to utility.

Then it is further stated that the labourer cannot build cottages. I

could name a lane at this moment the cottages in which were one and all

built by labourers; and there are half-a-dozen in this village which

were erected by regular farm labourers. The majority of these are, as I

said before, wretched hovels, but there are two or three which

demonstrate that the labourer, if he is a thrifty man, earns quite

sufficient to enable him to erect a reasonably good building. The worst

hovel I ever saw (it was mentioned in my letter of the 14th) was built

by a man who is notorious for his drinking habits. Some forty years ago,

when wages were much lower than they are now, two labourers, to my

knowledge, took possession of a strip of waste land by the roadside, and

built themselves cottages. One of these was a very fair building; the

other would certainly be condemned now-a-days. The lord of the manor

claimed these; and the difficulty was thus adjusted:--The builders were

to receive the value of their tenements from the lord of the manor, and

were to remain permanent tenants for life on payment of a small

percentage, interest upon the purchase-money, as quit-rent. On their

deaths the cottages were to become the property of the lord of the

manor. One man received L40 for his cottage, the other L20, which sums

forty years ago represented relatively a far higher value than now, and

demonstrate conclusively that the labourer, if he is a steady,

hard-working man, can build a cottage. Another cottage I know of, built

by a farm labourer, is really a very creditable building--good walls,

floors, staircase, sashes, doors; it stands high, and appears very

comfortable, and even pleasant, in summer, for they are a thrifty

family, and can even display flower-pots in the window. Other cottages

have been built or largely added to in my memory by labourers. On these

occasions they readily obtain help from the farmers. One lends his team

and waggons to draw the stones; another supplies wood for nothing; but

of late I must admit there has been some reluctance to assist in this

way (unless for repairs) because it was so often found that the

buildings thus erected were not fit habitations. The Boards of Guardians

often find a difficulty from the limited ownership of some of the

labourers, who apply for relief, of their cottages. Perhaps they have

not paid quit-rent for a year or two; but still they cannot sell, and

yet it seems unjust to the ratepayers to assist a man who has a tenement

which he at least calls his own, and from which he cannot be ejected, I

know a labourer at this moment living in a cottage originally built by

his father, and added to by himself by the assistance of the

neighbouring farmers. This man has been greatly assisted by one farmer

in particular, who advanced him money by which he purchased a horse and

cart, and was enabled to do a quantity of hauling, flint-carting for the

waywardens, and occasionally to earn money by assisting to carry a

farmer's harvest. He rents a large piece of arable land, and ought to be

comparatively well off.

"The Son of a Wiltshire Labourer" complains that the farmers or

proprietors do not make sufficient efforts to supply the cottages with

water. The lord of the manor and the tenant of the largest farms in this

immediate neighbourhood have but just sunk a well for their cottages;

previously they had got their supply from a pump in an adjacent

farmyard thrown open by the proprietor to all the village.

It is the labourer himself who will not rise. In a village with which I

am acquainted great efforts have been made by a farmer and a gentleman

living near to provide proper school instruction for the children. One

labourer was asked why he did not send his children to school. He

replied, "Because he could not afford it." "But," said the farmer, "it

is only threepence altogether." "Oh, no; he could not afford it." The

farmer explained to him that the object was to avoid a School Board,

which, in other places, had the power to fine for not sending children

to school. "No, he could not afford it." The farmer's books show that

this labourer, his wife, and two children received 28s. 6d. per week,

his cottage rent free, and a very large garden at a low rent. Yet he

could not afford the 3d. a week which would enable his children

ultimately to take a better position in the world! The same farmer, who

is a liberal and large-minded man, has endeavoured, without success, to

introduce the practice of paying in cash instead of beer, and also the

system of payment for overtime. The men say no, they would rather not.

"In wet weather," they say, "we do no work, but you pay us; and if we

work a little later in harvest, it only makes it fair." They would not

take money instead of beer. In another case which came under my personal

observation in the middle of last summer, a farmer announced his

intention of paying in cash instead of allowing beer. In the very press

of the haymaking, with acres upon acres of grass spoiling, his men, one

and all, struck work because he would not give them beer, and went over

to a neighbour's field adjacent and worked for him for nothing but their

share in the beer. If labourers work longer hours in harvest (corn), it

is because it is piece-work, and they thereby make more money. I contend

that the payment in kind, the beer, the gleanings, the piece-work, the

low and nominal cottage rent, the allotment ground and produce, and the

pig (not restricted to one pig in a year), may fairly be taken as an

addition to their wages. I am informed that in one parish the cottage

rents vary from 10d. to 1s. 2d. per week; nearly all have gardens, and

all may have allotments up to a quarter of an acre each at 3d. per lug,

or 40s. per acre. I am also informed of a labourer renting a cottage

and garden at 1s. per week, the fruit-trees in whose garden produced

this year three sacks of damsons, which he sold at 1s. 6d. per gallon,

or L6, 18s. I know of a case in which a labourer--an earnest,

intelligent, hard-working man--makes L2 a week on an average all the

year round. But then he works only at piece-work, going from farm to

farm, and this is, of course, an exceptional case. The old men, worn out

with age and infirmity, are kept on year after year by many farmers out

of charity, rather than let them go to the workhouse, though totally

useless and a dead loss, especially as occupying valuable cottage-room.

There is a society, the annual meetings of which are held at Chippenham,

and which is supported by the clergy, gentry, and farmers generally of

North Wilts, for the object of promoting steady habits among the

labourers and rewarding cases of long and deserving services. There is

also a friendly society on the best and most reliable basis, supported

by the gentry, and introduced as far as possible into villages. The

labourers on the Great Western Railway works at Swindon earn from 15s. a

week upwards, according as they approach to skilled workmen. Attracted

by these wages, most of the young men of the neighbourhood try the

factory, but, usually, after a short period return to farm-work, the

result of their experience being that they are better off as

agricultural labourers. Lodgings in the town close to the factory are

very expensive, and food in proportion; consequently they have to walk

long distances to their labour--some from Wanborough, five miles;

Wroughton, three and a half miles; Purton, four miles; and even Wootton

Bassett, six miles, which twice a day is a day's work in itself. Add to

this the temptations to spend money in towns, and the severe labour, and

the man finds himself better off with his quiet cottage and garden on a

farm at 12s. a week, and 1s. for milking, with beer, and a meal on

Sundays. The skilled mechanics, who earn 36s. to L2 per week, rent

houses in the town at 6s. to 8s.; and in one case I knew of 12s. per

week paid by a lodger for two rooms. These prices cannot be paid out of

the mechanic's wage; consequently he sub-lets, or takes lodgers, and

sometimes these sub-let, and the result is an overcrowding worse than

that of the agricultural cottages, around which there is at least fresh

air and plenty of light (nearly as important), which are denied in a

town. The factory labourer and the mechanic are liable to instant

dismissal. The agricultural labourers (half of them at least) are hired

by the year or half-year, and cannot be summarily sent along unless for

misconduct. Wages have recently been increased by the farmers of

Wiltshire voluntarily and without pressure from threatened strikes. It

is often those who receive the highest wages who are the first to come

to the parish for relief. It is not uncommon for mechanics and others to

go for relief where it is discovered that they are in receipt of sick

pay from the yard club, and sometimes from two friendly societies,

making 18s. a week. A manufacturing gentleman informed me that the very

men whom he had been paying L8 a week to were the first to apply for

relief when distress came and the mills stopped. It is not low wages,

then, which causes improvident habits. The only result of deporting

agricultural labourers to different counties is to equalise the wages

paid all over England. This union-assisted emigration affords the

improvident labourer a good opportunity of transporting himself to a

distant county, and leaving deeply in debt with the tradesmen with whom

he has long dealt. I am informed that this is commonly the case with

emigrating labourers. A significant fact is noted in the leader of the

_Labour News_ of the 16th of November; the return of certain emigrants

from America is announced as "indicative that higher quotations are not

always representative of greater positive advantages." The agricultural

labourer found that out when he returned from the factory at 15s. per

week to farm labour at 12s. I am positive that the morality of the

country compares favourably with that of the town. I was particularly

struck with this fact on a visit to the Black Country. One of the worst

parishes for immorality in Wiltshire is one where glovemaking is carried

on; singularly enough, manufactures and immorality seem to go together.

"The Son of a Labourer" says that all the advantages the labourer does

possess are owing to the exertions of the clergy; pray who support the

clergy but the farmers?

I think that the facts I have mentioned sufficiently demonstrate that

the farmers and the landlords of Wiltshire have done their duty, and

more than their mere duty, towards the labourers; and only a little

investigation will show that at present it is out of their power to do

more. Take the case of a farmer entering a dairy-farm of, say, 250

acres, and calculate his immediate outgoings--say fifty cows at L20,

L1,000; two horses at L25, L50; waggons, carts, implements, L100;

labour, three men at 12s. per week, L94; harvest labour, L20; dairymaid

L10; tithe, taxes, rates, &c., L100; rent, L2 per acre, L500. Total,

L1874. In other words (exclusive of the capital invested in stock), the

outgoings amount to L724 per annum; against which put--fifty cows' milk,

&c., at L10 per head, L500; fifty calves, L100; fifty tons of hay at L3,

10s., L175. Total income, L775; balance in hand, L51. Then comes the

village school subscription; sometimes a church rate (legally voluntary,

but morally binding), &c.

So that, in hard figures (all these are below the mark, if anything),

there is positively nothing left for the farmer but a house and garden

free. How, then, is money made? By good judgment in crops, in stock, by

lucky accidents. On a dairy-farm the returns begin immediately; on an

arable one there is half a year at least to wait. The care, the

judgment, required to be exercised is something astonishing, and a

farmer is said to be all his life learning his trade. If sheep are dear

and pay well, the farmer plants roots; then, perhaps, after a heavy

expenditure for manure, for labour, and seed, there comes the fly, or a

drought, and his capital is sunk. On the other hand, if the season be

good, roots are cheap and over-plentiful, and where is his profit then?

He works like a labourer himself in all weathers and at all times; he

has the responsibility and the loss, yet he is expected to find the

labourer, not only good cottages, allotments, schooling, good wages, but

Heaven knows what besides. Supposing the L1874 (on the dairy-farm) be

borrowed capital for which he must pay at least 4 per cent.--and few,

indeed, are there who get money at that price--it is obvious how hard

he must personally work, how hard, too, he must live, to make both ends

meet. And it speaks well for his energy and thrift that I heard a bank

director not long since remark that he had noticed, after all, with

every drawback, the tenant farmers had made as a rule more money in

proportion than their landlords. A harder-working class of men does not

exist than the Wiltshire farmers.

Only a few days ago I saw in your valuable paper a list, nearly a column

long, of the millionaires who had died in the last ten years. It would

be interesting to know how much they had spent for the benefit of the

agricultural labourer. Yet no one attacks them. They pay no poor-rates,

no local taxation, or nothing in proportion. The farmer pays the

poor-rate which supports the labourer in disease, accident, and old age;

the highway rates on which the millionaire's carriage rolls; and very

soon the turnpike trusts will fall in, and the farmers--_i.e._, the

land--will have to support the imperial roads also. With all these heavy

burdens on his back, having to compete against the world, he has yet no

right to compensation for his invested capital if he is ordered to quit.

Without some equalisation of local taxation--as I have shown, the local

taxes often make another rent almost--without a recognised tenant-right,

not revolutionary, but for unexhausted improvements, better security, so

that he can freely invest capital, the farmer cannot--I reiterate it, he

cannot--do more than he has done for the labourer. He would then employ

more skilled labour, and wages would be better. And, after all that he

does for them, he dares not find fault, or he may find his ricks blazing

away--thanks to the teaching of the agitators that the farmers are

tyrants, and, by inference, that to injure them is meritorious. There is

a poster in Swindon now offering L20 reward for the discovery of the

person who maliciously set fire to a rick of hay in Lord Bolingbroke's

park at Lydiard.

If any farmers are hard upon their men, it is those who have themselves

been labourers and have risen to be employers of labour. These very

often thoroughly understand the art of getting the value of a man's wage

out of him. I deliberately affirm that the true farmers, one and all,

are in favour of that maxim of a well-known and respected agriculturist

of our county--"A fair day's wage for a fair day's work."

I fear the farmers of Wiltshire would be only too happy to ride

thorough-breds to the hunt, and see their daughters driving phaetons, as

they are accused of doing; but I also fear that very, very few enjoy

that privilege. Most farmers, it is true, do keep some kind of vehicle;

it is necessary when their great distance from a town is considered, and

the keep of a horse or two comes to nothing on a large farm. It is

customary for them to drive their wives or daughters once a week on

market-days into the nearest town. If here and there an energetic man

succeeds in making money, and is able to send his son to a university,

all honour to him. I hope the farmers will send their sons to

universities; the spread of education in their class will be of as much

advantage to the community as among the labouring population, for it

will lead to the more general application of science to the land and a

higher amount of production. If the labourer attempted to rise he would

be praised; why not the farmer?

It is simply an unjustifiable libel on the entire class to accuse them

of wilful extravagance. I deliberately affirm that the majority of

farmers in Wiltshire are exactly the reverse; that, while they practise

a generous hospitality to a friend or a stranger, they are decidedly

saving and frugal rather than extravagant, and they are compelled to be

so by the condition of their finances. To prove that their efforts are

for the good of the community I need only allude to the work of the late

Mr. Stratton, so crowned with success in improving the breed of

cattle--a work in the sister county of Gloucester so ably carried on at

this present moment by Mr. Edward Bowly, and by Mr. Lane and Mr. Garne

in the noted Cotswold sheep. The breeds produced by these gentlemen have

in a manner impregnated the whole world, imported as they have been to

America and Australia. It was once ably said that the readings of the

English Bible Sunday after Sunday in our churches had preserved our

language pure for centuries; and, in the same way, I do verily believe

that the English (not the Wiltshire only, but the English) farmer as an

institution, with his upright, untainted ideas of honour, honesty, and

morality, has preserved the tone of society from that corruption which

has so miserably degraded France--so much so that Dumas recently

scientifically predicted that France was _en route a prostitution

generale_. Just in the same way his splendid constitution as a man

recruits the exhausted, pale, nervous race who dwell in cities, and

prevents the Englishman from physically degenerating.--I am, Sir,

faithfully yours,

RICHARD JEFFERIES.

COATE FARM, SWINDON, _November 25, 1872_.

_THE ALLOTMENT SYSTEM._

(_To the Editor of the "Times."_)

SIR,--Many gentlemen having written to me for further information upon

the system of glebe allotments for labourers mentioned in my letter to

the _Times_ of November 14, it has occurred to me that the following

facts may be interesting:--

The glebe alluded to was that of Lyddington, near Swindon, and the plan

was originated by the late incumbent, Mr. May, but carried out into a

complete system by the present much-respected rector, the Rev. H. Munn.

The land itself is situated not more than 300 yards from the village of

Lyddington, by the side of a good turnpike-road, and is traversed by two

roads giving easy access to every allotment. Each plot of ground is

divided from the next by a narrow green path: no hedges or mounds are

permitted, and the field itself is enclosed without a hedge to harbour

birds. The soil is a rich dark loam, yielding good crops, with very

little manure, and the surface is level. There are sixty-three tenants

occupying plots varying in size, according to circumstances, from 48

"lug" downwards--25, 30, 16, &c. A "lug" is a provincialism for perch.

The rent is 5d. per "lug" or perch, and each occupier on becoming a

tenant receives a card on which the following rules are printed in large

type:--

"LYDDINGTON GARDEN ALLOTMENTS.

"RULES AND REGULATIONS.

"1. The land shall be cultivated by the spade only, and proper

attention shall be paid to its cultivation.

"2. No allotment, or any part thereof, shall be under-let or

exchanged.

"3. The rent shall be due on the 1st of September in each year, and

shall be paid before the crop is taken off the ground.

"4. All tenants shall maintain a character for morality and

sobriety, and shall not frequent a public-house on the Sabbath-day.

"5. If any tenant fail to pay his rent or to perform any of the

foregoing conditions he shall immediately forfeit his allotment,

with his crop upon the same, and the landlord or his agent shall

take possession and enforce payment of the rent due by sale of the

crop or otherwise, as in arrears of rent.

"All the tenants are earnestly requested to attend regularly at the

House of God during the times of Divine Service, with their

families, to the best of their abilities."

The object of Rule 2 is to enable the landlord to retain a certain

amount of influence over the tenant, to bring him in immediate contact

with the tenant, and to keep the land itself under his control. Many

occupiers endeavour to under-let their allotments, which, if permitted,

would entirely defeat the main object of the landlord, besides

complicating the already great labour of collecting the rents, &c.

Rule 3 prevents the produce of the allotment going to pay the

public-house score; while the date on which the rent falls due is so

adjusted as to enable the occupier to receive his money for harvest-work

before paying it.

Rule 4 places a great restraint upon drunkenness and dissolute habits.

Last year the Rev. H. Munn addressed a private circular to his tenants,

in which he says:--

"Sad reports have been brought to me lately of the conduct of some in

the parish, and among them, I am sorry to say, are tenants of the

Allotment Gardens. Such conduct is contrary to the rules on which the

allotments are held, and also contrary to the intentions of my

predecessor in letting them out to the parishioners. They are intended

to improve the condition of the labourers and their families, giving

them employment in the summer evenings, increasing their supply of food,

and withdrawing them from the influence of the public-house. But when

drinking habits are indulged all these benefits are lost, and the

allotments, which were intended to do the labourer good, only increase

his means of obtaining intoxicating drinks."

The landlord can, of course, exercise his discretion in enforcing Rule

5--can allow time for payment, and in certain cases of misfortune, such

as the failure of the potato crop, remit it entirely. But this power

must be sparingly used, otherwise every one would endeavour to find

excuses for non-fulfilment of the contract.

The extent of the allotment is written on the back of the card of rules,

with the name of the tenant, thus:--"D. Hancock.--Lot 1, Lug 15; rent

6s. 3d.;" and each payment is receipted underneath, with the date and

initials of the landlord.

The present landlord has in no case disturbed or removed the tenants

received by his predecessor, but where land has fallen in he has

endeavoured to arrange the extent of the new allotments made to suit the

requirements of families, and to allow of a sufficient crop of potatoes

being grown for one season on one half of the allotment, while the other

half bears different vegetables, and _vice versa_ for the next season,

being the same thing as a rotation of crops.

The field has recently been drained at the joint cost of landlord and

tenant. The Rev. H. Munn provided the drain-pipes, and the occupiers

paid for the labour, which latter came to L8, the amount being

proportioned according to the size of each allotment. The highest

amount paid by any one tenant was, I believe, L1 (for 48 "lug"), others

going down to 1s.

The rent at 5d. per "lug" or perch comes to L3, 6s. 8d. per acre, an

amount which bears a proper relation to the rent of arable farming land,

when the labour of collecting so many small sums and other circumstances

are taken into consideration. The moral effect of the arrangement has

been incalculable--as one old woman pertinently remarked, "We needn't

steal now, sir." In the olden times the farmers' gardens were constantly

subject to depredations. The ordinary rate at which gardens are let in

the neighbourhood is 6d. per "lug." At Swindon, the nearest town (12,000

inhabitants), there are large allotment fields let at 1s. 6d. per "lug,"

or L12 per acre, and eagerly caught up at that price. These allotments

are rented by every class, from labourers and mechanics to well-to-do

tradesmen.

The very first desire of every agricultural labourer's heart is a

garden, and so strong is the feeling that I have known men apply for

permission to cultivate the vacant space between the large double

mounds of the hedges on some pasture farms, and work hard at it despite

the roots of the bushes and the thefts of the rooks.

The facts mentioned above only add one more to the numberless ways in

which the noble clergy of the Church of England have been silently

labouring for the good of the people committed to their care for years

before the agitators bestowed one thought on the agricultural poor.--I

am, Sir, faithfully yours,

RICHARD JEFFERIES.

COATE FARM, SWINDON.

(_Published in the "Times," Nov. 23, 1872._)

_A TRUE TALE OF THE WILTSHIRE LABOURER._

"Now then--hold fast there--mind the furrow, Tim." The man who was

loading prepared himself for the shock, and the waggon safely jolted

over the furrow, and on between the wakes of light-brown hay, crackling

to the touch as if it would catch fire in the brilliant sunshine. The

pitchers, one on each side, stuck their prongs into the wakes and sent

up great "pitches," clearing the ground rapidly, through emulation, for

it was a point of honour to keep pace with each other. Tim, the old man

who had led the horses, resumed his rake in the rear among the women,

who instantly began teasing the poor wretch.

"Tim, she's allus in the way," said one, purposely hitching her rake in

his. "Thur--get away."

"I shan't," said Tim, surly as crabbed age and incessant banter under a

hot sun could make him. "Now--mind, thee's break th' rake."

They both pulled as hard as they dared--each expecting the other to give

way, for the master was in sight, on horseback, by the rick, and a rake

broken wantonly would bring a sharp reprimand.

"Go it, Sal!" cried the loader on the waggon hoarsely, half choked with

hay dust. "Pull away!"

"Pull, Tim!" cried one of the pitchers.

"Ha! ha!" laughed two or three more women, closing round as the girl

gave a tug which nearly upset Tim and broke half-a-dozen teeth out of

his rake.

"Darn thee!" growled the old fellow. The youngest of the girls at the

same moment gave him a push under the arm with the end of her

rake-handle. It was the last straw which broke the back of Tim's temper.

Swearing, he dropped the rake and seized a prong, and hobbled after the

girl, who danced away half in delight and half in terror.

"I'll job this into thee--darn thee--if I can come near thee, thee

hussy!"

The "hussy" let him come near, and danced away again gracefully. She

was at once the most handsome and most impudent of his tormentors.

There's no saying whether the old man, roused as he was and incensed

beyond control, might not really have "jobbed," _i.e._, stabbed, his

prong at her, had not one of the pitchers left his wake and rushed on

him.

"My eye!" shouted the loader, "Absalom's at 'un!"

Absalom took Tim by the shoulders and hurled him on the ground pretty

heavily. Flinging the prong twenty yards away, he threatened to knock

his head off if he didn't let Madge alone. Old Tim slowly got up and

went off after his tool, growling to himself, while Madge clung hold of

Absalom's arm, who, turning round, kissed her. The other women looked

jealously on as she followed him back to his wake, and kept close to him

at his work.

Madge was tall and slenderly made. Her limbs were more delicately

proportioned than is usual among women accustomed to manual labour from

childhood. The rosy glow of health lit up her brown but clear cheek,

free from freckles and sun-spots. Her eyes, black as sloes, were fringed

with long dark eyelashes which gave their glances an _espiegle_

expression. They were very wicked-looking eyes, full of fun and

mischief. Her dress, open at the throat, displayed a faultless neck, but

slightly sun-browned. Her curly dark-brown hair escaped in ringlets down

her back. A lovely nut-brown maid!

Soft glances passed rapidly between Madge and Absalom, as she raked

behind him. They did not escape the jealous notice of the other women.

It was the last day of the hay-harvest--it was "hay home" that night.

Harvest is a time of freedom, but the last day resembles the ancient

Saturnalia, or rather perhaps the vine season in Italy, when the

grape-gatherers indulged their rude wit on every one who came near.

Raillery and banter poured incessantly on Madge and Absalom, who replied

with equal freedom.

"Grin away," shouted Absalom at last, half pleased, half irritated, as

he stuck his prong in the ground, and seizing Madge, kissed her before

them all. "Thur--I bean't ashamed on her!"

"Ha! ha! ha! Hoorah!" shouted the men. Madge slipped away towards the

rear, blushing scarlet. So absorbed had they been as not to notice the

approach of another waggon coming in the opposite direction, which was

now alongside. Seeing the kiss and hearing the laugh, one of the men,

following it, shouted in a stentorian voice, for which he was renowned--

"Darn my buttons if I won't have one of they!"

In an instant he was over the wake and caught Madge in his arms. But she

struggled and cried. Absalom was there in a moment.

"Go it, Roaring Billy!" shouted the followers of the other waggon. But

Absalom shook him free, and the girl darted away. The two men stood

fronting each other. Absalom was angry. Billy had had a trifle too much

beer. A quarrel was imminent, and fists were doubled, when the pitchers

rushed up and separated them.

The last pitch was now flung up, and the women began to decorate the

horses and the waggons with green boughs.

"Come on, Madge," said Absalom, "we'll ride whoam;" and despite of much

feminine shyness and many objections, and after much trouble and

blushing and rude jokes about legs, Madge was hoisted up, and Absalom

followed her. To the rickyard they rode in triumph among green boughs,

and to the rude chorus of a song.

At seven that evening the whole gang were collected in the farmer's

great kitchen. A huge room it was, paved with stone flags, the walls

whitewashed, and the ceiling being the roof itself, whose black beams

were festooned with cobwebs. Three or four tables had been arranged in a

row, and there was a strong smell of "dinner" from smoking joints.

Absalom came in last. He had spent some time in adorning himself in a

white clean slop and new corduroys, with a gay necktie and his

grandfather's watch. His face shone from a recent wash. It was an open

countenance, which unconsciously prepossessed one in his favour.

Light-blue or grey eyes, which looked you straight in the face, were

overshadowed with rather thick eyebrows. His forehead was well

proportioned, and crowned with a mass of curling yellow hair. A

profusion of whiskers hid his chin, which perhaps in its shape indicated

a character too easy and yielding. His shoulders were broad; his

appearance one of great strength. But his mouth had a sensual look.

Absalom pushed in and out by Madge.

"What didst thee have to eat?" asked a crony of his afterwards.

"Aw," said Absalom, fetching a sigh at the remembrance of the good

things. "Fust I had a plate of rus beef, then a plate of boiled beef;

then I had one of boiled mutton, and next one of roast mutton; last,

bacon. I found I couldn't git on at all wi' th' pudding, but when the

cheese and th' salad came, didn't I pitch into that!"

Absalom's love did not spoil his appetite.

Soon as the dishes were removed, pipes were brought out and tankards

sent on their rounds. By this time poor old Tim's weak brains were

muddled, and he was discovered leaning back against the wall and

mumbling out the tag-end of an old song:--

"On' Humphry wi' his flail,

But Kitty she wur the charming ma-aid

To carry th' milking pa-ail!"

This set them on singing, and Roaring Billy insisted on bawling out at

the top of his stentorian lungs the doleful ditty of "Lord Bateman and

his Daughters," which ran to thirty verses, and lasted half-an-hour.

Hardly were the last words out of his mouth, when an impatient wight

struck up the "Leathern Bottel," and heartily did they all join in the

chorus, down to where the ballad describes the married man wanting to

beat his wife, and using a glass bottle for the purpose, which broke and

let all the wine about:--

"Whereas it had been the Leathern Bottel,

The stopper been in he might banged away well,"

without danger of creating an unanswerable argument in favour of

leathern bottles.

By this time they were pretty well "boozed." A thick cloud of

tobacco-smoke filled the kitchen. Heads were rolling about from side to

side and arms stretched over the tables among the _debris_ of broken

pipes and in pools of spilt beer and froth. Despite these rude,

unromantic surroundings, Absalom and Madge were leaning close against

each other, hand-in-hand, almost silent, but looking in each other's

eyes. What account takes passion of pipes or beer, smoke or drunken men,

of snores and hoarse voices? None: they were oblivious of these things.