plough, earning 2s. 6d. a week; and at fifteen he could hold the plough itself, and drive the team, and began to mow, and to help in the harvest field, earning then 4s. a week. As he became a rather tall man, and a hearty worker, his growth could not have been checked by either labour or want. His mother said his food cost half-a-crown a week; and so it ought, as he earned it, and wanted it for his growth. At the then price of bread, he could not make out with less than eighteen pennyworth; and the other shilling paid for potatoes, butter or cheese, milk, and afterwards tea; together with his share of the bacon from his father’s pig, and some occasional cabbages from the garden. He earned his bacon and greens, his father said, by his help in the garden at over hours.
Long before he was twenty he was earning men’s wages: that is, 9s. a week, with occasional opportunities of making more. He must have found or made many such opportunities; for he had laid by largely when he married at five-and-twenty. His parents had favoured him as much as they could; for they were proud of him, and he was in every way a credit to them. The young woman he married was a fit partner for him. She had laid by money in service, and had gained friends there; so that it was a prosperous and promising marriage. Neither John nor Susan had any learning. Neither could read; but both were lively and intelligent. They had 50l. laid by when they determined to marry: and, as John was not in the least likely to come upon the rate, he was chosen for superior and well-paid work such as is carefully kept out of the hands of pauper labourers. They took a cottage of four rooms at 5l. a year, and a garden at a separate rent, large enough to grow potatoes and cabbages for themselves and the pig, even after the house was full of children. For the greater part of his life, from the day he entered this cottage, John paid poor-rate. It was with him a matter of conscience and of pride; and it was a dark day to him when at last he was obliged to give it up; and a darker still when he came upon the rate himself. He thought it hard, after his course of honest toil; but there were his wife and idiot daughter to be considered; and there was no help for it. This, however, did not happen till a dozen years ago.
After his marriage, the complaints of agricultural distress became more frequent and more bitter. Few townspeople believed the truth of them, seeing what a dash the farmers cut at intervals, and what regular grumblers they were; but the thing was true enough, as John could have borne witness, though he could not have explained the reason.
He was better off than most of his class; for he worked on the estate of a nobleman who knew him by name and valued him, and his father before him: but the agent must do as others did and as times grew bad, he retrenched labour and wages. It was well understood that families could not exist on what they earned or received from the parish; and private charity was nearly driven out by the operation of the Poor Law.
How, then, did they live? Nearly all were in debt to the shop, and held out for a time on credit. A more important resource was poaching. It is not my present business to describe the state of society as it then was. I mention the poaching to account for whole families not being starved when they had no sufficient income to support them. Sometimes they ate, in haste and secrecy, the hare or rabbits they obtained; and oftener they sold the game they got on winter nights to the agents of London poulterers, gaming more money on a Saturday night than by the whole week’s toil of the entire family.
John was never tempted by practices of this kind. He was far above them. As his family came on fast, and earnings diminished, he worked harder. That his children should go to school he was resolved, for he felt the disadvantage of being unable to read and write: and to school they went—the elder ones, and for as long as he could manage it.
Before he had been married eight years, the trouble of sickness entered his home.
During his wife’s fifth confinement, when he could not afford such attendance as at first, a sad accident happened. The eldest child, seven, was taking care of three little ones before the door, when one of the boys, in rough play, laid her head open with a shovel. A long illness followed, and she grew up an idiot.
By degrees, the money store in the bank all drained away; and then John was not so comfortably dressed as formerly. He could not change his clothes when wet, and went ill shod to his work. His feet were often wet all day; and he had not always dry ones at home. He had never been taught the mischief of sleeping in his day-shirt and flannel waistcoat, and had a notion of its being somehow a wholesome proceeding. When his wife became overtasked with her large family, and the washing was a heavy business, John spared too much in clean shirts. He began to feel changes of weather “in all his bones,” as he said; and his work became less easy to him in cold and damp seasons.
At the same time, the domestic table fell off in quality. For several years there had always been a goodly dish of meat on Sundays, baked in a dishful of potatoes; and two or three times a week there had been pies or meat-dumplings, made from the cheaper parts of the carcase of ox or sheep, timely bespoken from the butcher; or, very frequently, a dinner of “fry” when a neighbouring pig was killed, obtained by exchange for vegetables, or an hour’s jobbing in some garden or at some fence.
As times grew worse, there was less and less of all this; and bacon became the only meat ever seen on the table, except in pig-killing week. Every effort was made to feed the growing children, body and mind. John denied himself the help in the field of one boy for nine years, which were given to schooling. It was not his fault that the self-denial was nearly useless. At the end of nine years the lad could not do more than “read a chapter” in a way half-intelligible to himself, and not at all intelligible to his eager parents, and just scrawl a letter in large, ill-spelt, ill-chosen words. The other boy