mechanic, did not deign to speak to him, but sent her servant to receive his message. A few days later the same carpenter was helping me to strain a large canvas, and I, too, had my hammer and did my share. So I said: "What would Mrs. think of my working like this with you?" "She was not brought up to work," he gravely replied. With the same lady, who supplied me with milk and butter, I attempted, during her rather prolonged visit of ceremony, to discuss the interests and attractions of a dairy; but she replied that she knew little about that, as she used to live in London. In London; but never among that delightful throng who are doing, writing, thinking, painting, talking-oh, especially talking-winged words, that skim the rushing river of life, where ideas that everybody is thinking seem to be one's own thoughts, and fill every one with the stir and rush of multitudinous vitality; for ideas and thoughts are catching. But that is in the past.

Now, stranded in this little back-water, dozing among lilies and weeds, I had expected my solitude to be filled with pleasant, even brilliant ideas, but discovered with dismay that my mind was a mere pond full of other people's reflections, and now to the very bottom empty, dead of drought. Would no new seed of thought, wind-borne from across the hill, take root in it? No; I looked over fields of cabbage-heads and dreaded to become of them.

A brother of the brush who had painted a sign of "George and the Dragon," apparently without the benefit of a sovereign for model, came to fraternize. He had also produced that row of sham windows, "quite natural"; but somehow even this artistic society did not seem stimulating.

To the farmers' wives my exploits with spade and fork, my sifting of loam and distributing manure to my flower-garden, of which I delighted to boast to them, indicated humble birth. One of them proposed to confer upon me the honor of teaching her daughter to paint, and assumed a lofty air of patronage. Pupils were not in my line, I said, but was it possible the young girl had great talent, and did she wish to support herself as an artist? With great pride: "Oh, no; she does not have to work." Then said I, "I feel no interest in teaching her." Confused surprise!

As years have gone on I have discovered those thrifty, simple folk who are the substantial, sensible cultivators of our land, and

VOL. LXII.-2.

whose wives are not above the cares of dairy and poultry. It is pleasant to meet farmers in their fields, where they willingly permit my rambles, or to peer into a dark barn and find the master looking on at his shearing, or meet him in the harvest-field, where he measures the work of the reapers, who are paid by the piece. I have never seen one of the farmers use his own hand in plowing or reaping.

Short as the time is since I came here, it is long enough to have seen pretentious folk obliged to give up their farms, while some who began as laborers have become thriving small cultivators. In one case a legacy enabled the family to buy one cow. Wife and daughters were not above driving her to the common for pasture, or learning to make the best butter. Now they have seven cows and pasture of their own. Another family of brothers rented jointly a small farm, which they have worked so profitably as to be able to increase their holdings and to invest in valuable agricultural machines for their own use and to hire. They do the real labor of their land, and their families occupy the comfortable house together.

Simple laborers are to me more sympathetic than their masters. The impossibility of pretension, and the calmness with which they live by daily bread, dignify in character what is lacking in education. Many among them I have come to know well; for when the winter comes and work is not pressing, they have spent an hour or two in my studio, being painted, and won to talking without shyness. They certainly have no conversational gifts, and having nothing to say, say it. The older people use words with Chaucer plurals, such as "birdies," "posties."

Our village affords exceptional advantages in its spacious common of six hundred acres, where each cottager may pasture two cows. This pasture-land lies on the top of the hill, in glades sheltered by groves of oak, and bordered by copses of nut-wood and thickets of fern. Here may be gathered knitches of dead wood and dried fern, plentiful nuts, wild plums and berries, even alpine strawberries in abundance. If by rare chance our peasants perceive the beauty of the earth, they know why this place calls all wanderers to return.

Below in the village are the allotments where each cottager may hire, for two shillings and sevenpence a year, a strip of welllying land, about two hundred feet long by fifteen wide. The allotments lie together, divided by narrow grass paths. Here the

laborer, after his long day's work for hire, never less than ten hours, works again with renewed energy for an hour or two in the evening, to grow potatoes and greens for his household.

Our farm-houses are usually fine brick buildings with tiled roofs, in the stately, severe taste of two centuries ago, standing back from the road among their colony of barns, ample ricks, and walled yards, sheltered by noble trees. They bespeak a life of ease and abundance. The laborers' cottages, near at hand, are little whitened huts curiously compounded of bricks, timber, hurdles,

and mortar (called expressively wattle and daub), and covered with thatch. From a distance they are scarcely distinguishable from ricks. Two or three tiny rooms shelter large families, living by unceasing toil-toil which has no reward but daily bread, and hardly enough of that. Yet in this narrow home affection and self-sacrifice find room. Many a man with eight or nine children receives only eleven shillings a week for daily work from dawn to dark. A little extra money for harvest provides rent and spare fuel. They must begin their life of toil as soon as school-board requirements are satis

fied and very often have to trudge two or three miles to their work, which begins in winter at seven o'clock. Boys have only sixpence a day, with thirty shillings at Michaelmas. What wonder that sometimes they look rather lounging and listless, with their growing youth's hunger never quite satisfied at the crowded home table!

At harvest or haymaking they often work seven or ten miles distant, where they sleep under a hedge and walk home occasionally for cooked food. Meat is certainly not tasted except on Sundays.

How can they study in the evening? Have you ever tried to read or study after ten hours of manual labor? It must be something of extraordinary interest that will keep one awake, and besides, these poor people have no bright lamps, no quiet rooms. There is nothing for the growing men so cheerful as the Plow Inn, but there I have not followed them.

A place so poor as ours has no club, reading-room, or library. There is a small parish room at the vicarage, where some books and newspapers are to be found, but a very few men fill it. Many of our people go to chapel, and will not be beholden to the vicarage, where all are really welcome.

To many of the men and boys the choir practice and Sunday services are their great pleasure and pride. Twenty-four sing in our ancient church, neatly dressed in cassock and surplice, with face and hair scrubbed and burnished. At least on one day in the week they have a glad sense of belonging to the highest service, if perhaps not always a religious emotion. Then, too, the choir has an annual fête in summer, a visit to London by excursion train, to see Olympia, Mme. Tussaud's, or the Zoo, and return late at night in joyous excitement. At Christmas they make a visit in full company to the various houses of richer members of the congregation, singing carols and receiving small presents.

It is rather an important occasion, requiring a little speech from the audience, and involving some mutual shyness. On their last visit I welcomed them in my studio, and listened to three long carols, and all was happily over, but two of the smallest choristers were not in the company. Scarcely had the men and boys left me to continue their round when the missing nine-year-old urchins appeared at the end of the path, overcome with alarm, afraid to venture forward. I called out, "What is it, boys?" "Please, ma'am, would you like to hear some singing?" "Certainly. Come in." So they

took a position in the studio, and gave very well the three long hymns to which I had already patiently listened, quite lost their shyness, and departed very proud and happy. The men said they were too little to go out with them, but this they had properly disproved, and they really could read their words and knew their music well, dear little chaps. The carols begin on Christmas eve, and last until boxing-night, and the same songs are sung over and over again. Perhaps in the darkness, and with faces concealed under caps with fringes of cut paper, the same boys come more than once, as some artlessly confessed. It is a difficult matter to keep a supply of small coin for the carolers.

The only amusement for girls is the fête of their Friendly Society, and that brings many young servants home from their places in towns for a summer holiday. Fresh cotton frocks and straw hats set off their pretty faces and figures. These people are often very handsome, even beautiful, in youth; but at forty a workman has stiff limbs and gait, and his face is lined with heavy years. There is little chance for them to seek a neighborhood of higher wages, for moving their little households to any distance would be a ruinous expense; but the children, at least, go out into the world at twelve years old, perhaps far away, and parents grow into easier, though solitary, old age. There are often little extras to their small wages in a pig, or a hatching of ducks or chickens. If any man's pig dies a natural death, he expects us all to help him buy another.

On the common they gather stores of dead wood and small fuel and dried bracken. Even the aged blind woman is led up the hill, and breathes the fresh sea air in that higher atmosphere, returning with a load that almost hides her bent figure. Dried fern is good bedding for the pig, and protects tender plants from frost. Then, too, there is liberal gleaning, and in autumn nuts, wild berries, and mushrooms may be gathered to sell, and women are paid a little for turning hay and weeding.

The last work of the old laborer is roadmending, and it is strange to see those who are past all active work sitting on the roadside breaking flints. Any work is happier than idleness, for without mental activity it is impossible to be idle amusingly. It is touching to note the frequent deaths of aged people at their work or in the field; touching, too, to note the nameless mounds on the

hill above the church, where the long grass is neatly trimmed, and fresh flowers are constantly laid by those who remember. Saturday evening is the favorite time for tending these memorials. There to-day came an old man, far in his eighties, carrying up the steep path a can of water for the newly planted flower on his wife's grave.

I love to see the harvest work. Near is a great field of wheat, here called corn. Down through the green lane, under cool shade from overhanging ash, between walls of clematis and honeysuckle in bloom, we come suddenly into unusual stir. Little children, tidily dressed, are in charge of thirsty babies and of baskets with refreshing drinks, not for the babies-bottles wrapped in big leaves and kept in the cool shade; home-brewed beer, it may be, or cold tea. Even these children, still too young to help bind, look eager and excited, for it is a great day for the laborers. Men are paid by the measure which they cut, not by time, and some have earned in one day, with wife and children to help tie, as much as fifteen shillings. A long day of English midsummer, from dawn to dark, may give fourteen hours of labor. All the rest of the year is ordinary routine from seven to five o'clock. The wage is not more than two shillings per day, often less, so the busy harvest weeks are fraught with all the golden riches of the year.

The shady lane suddenly opens to the wide field. There it lies in the lap of the great down, like a basin of gold filled to the brim with quivering light-one broad thirty-acre field, all wheat, with its sunburnt, heavy ears looking like golden nuggets. Far up to the left, where the golden bowl fits into the side of the hill, in a little copse, tall trees fling their branches darkly against the blue. Everywhere else as far as the eye can search, up to the rim of the hills, is golden grain. What dazzling sunshine now at high noon! As the mowers pass, the red gold turns suddenly to silver. As the standing wheat falls and the straw lies flat, its color changes to silver, with shadows of soft violet.

The air is dry, but filled with haze like a gauzy veil. It is not moisture, but dust from falling wheat palpitating in light; waves of light refracted, turned back from everything, splintered, glittering, yet somehow vague for very excess of brightness, shimmering under the dry east wind.

There are many companies of mowers in the field, for it must be done before night. Each reaper has his wife or daughters and boys to heap and bind. They wear shirts

with the sleeves rolled up, trousers belted and gartered, and felt hats. Necks and arms are copper-brown and glistening, their shirts look blue, their corduroy trousers white or gray. The girls have fresh cotton frocks and white aprons, and all have the air of taking the work joyfully, like a holiday.

The young man now beginning quite near me rushes into his task like a swimmer breasting the waves. He plants his feet wide apart, grasps the scythe for a mighty sweep, and leans forward for the free swing of his arms. The wheat stands up to his face. With rapid, rhythmical strides and swinging arms he cleaves a path through the rustling grain, and as he forges on, breast-deep, behind him lie eddies of silver and violet, still and motionless like the ripples printed on a sandy beach.

Now he turns and comes toward me, his eager face scarcely above the wheat; he comes swiftly, proud of his skill and strength. Good nature and breath enough he has to fling out a merry word to the little children sitting near me under the hedge-row, and to call cheerily to a big boy and a girl to bind his sheaves. Once a covey of partridges rose wildly in front of him, and winged whirring on toward the coppice.

This is not a cricket-ground, but the spirit of that game is all here. The men are displaying their strength and endurance for the admiration of wives or sweethearts, who are broiling in the sun, while the mowers stream with sweat. They often mop their brows, or eyes would be blinded. Now and then one calls for a drink, and a child, knowing the voice, runs out with a basket of provisions. It is thirsty work indeed.

Now

In the middle of the field are an elderly couple-a man of heavy build, and a woman, thick in the waist, as we grow to be past middle life. Their children must be fledged and flown, for they work together without attendants, the woman binding his sheaves and keeping her food-basket near. they are growing farther and farther away, their task lying upward to the opposite. boundary, like the path of their lives away from youth and childhood. To them only, in all the field, there seems to be toil without mirth.

How well I remember this field last spring! It had just been plowed and planted. I crossed it by the narrow foot-path, amazed at the number of flints and stones. It seemed like a turnpike newly dressed and waiting for the steam-roller. To tread down the old path again needed iron shoes. How could