of Violet, or of Jerry. Visit them when the day's work is over, and the whole family are gathered round the hearth, and the never-failing topic of conversation will be the horses.
As a babe, the first words he lisps are the names of the horses. Does he cry—he is taken to see "Prince," or lifted up to pat "Diamond." He no sooner learns to walk than he finds his way to the stable, toddling with the rest of the family after "dadda," as he spends hour after hour cleaning and baiting his charge. Thus, from earliest infancy, he is receiving a technical education; he hears of nothing, thinks of nothing, talks of nothing but of that one business by which he is to live; the stable becomes playroom and schoolroom combined; all his ideas centre in it and gather round it; and when in due course he becomes a mate, he displays at once an inborn and inbred faculty for managing horses.
And the life thus commenced continues with unvarying regularity to the end of the chapter. Once a mate, he has to be up at five o'clock in the morning; his work is not over until ten at night, and during every hour of the day, except when he himself is eating, he is with the horses, either in the field or the stable.
Of course such hours are outrageously long, and would indeed be insupportable if it were not for the society of the horses. Efforts have been made to shorten a mate's daily work, and in one place it is reported that by an arrangement of staying longer one day, and coming later the next, the hours are reduced to twelve!
Moreover, under this system, all about the boy are as ignorant as himself. Whether he lodges with his father, or the waggoner with whom he works, it is about the same as far as his stock of ideas is concerned. From all parts of Kent, even from employers themselves, comes the same tale. One employer says, "I have not a well-educated labourer, male or female. They may some of them be able to read after a fashion, but there is not one of them that writes well enough for a stranger, unused to them, to read off (what they have written) at first sight."
A lady who takes much interest in "waggoners' mates," says, "Many, if not all, have been to school, but have forgotten nearly all they learnt. They have generally lost all desire to improve themselves. I know seven men in one hamlet who cannot read."
