Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/497

Rh, allowed to lie entirely fallow, or at most is used for pasture, or for the growth of such light crops as esparsette and the legumes. Next year the Brachfeld of the former year becomes Winterfeld; the former Winterfeld is used for Sommerfeld; and so on year after year, and century after century.

A part of the commune-land is used as pasture, and on it each person holding a village right may pasture a certain number of cattle, sheep, pigs, and geese. A second part is meadow-land, and every twelve years this is divided into as many parts as there are holders of village rights, and each one receives a share, of which he has the exclusive use until the redivision at the end of the duodecade. Still a third part of the commune-land is planted with fruit-trees; the produce of which is sold for the benefit of the communal treasury. A fourth, and largest part, is planted with forest-trees, and from it each person receives yearly a certain amount of building and fire wood.

During the months when farm-work is possible the peasants in E rise between four and five, and, after a breakfast of coffee, sausage, and bread, go at once to the fields. At half-past nine or ten the whole family sit down in the field and eat black bread, washed down with a kind of coarse brandy called schnapps. Then work goes on again until twelve, when, if the day is hot, they return home and rest for an hour or two, making their noonday meal of bread and the remains of the coffee prepared in the morning and kept warm on the embers, or, if wood is scarce, by wrapping the coffee-pot in the bedclothes! After their return to work, an afternoon meal of bread and schnapps is eaten at half-past three, and an evening meal of bread, coffee, and a warm soup, when they stop work at seven or eight. Constant toil of this sort leaves but little time for reading or self-improvement, and only six papers are taken in E, not more than twelve or fourteen persons in all reading them. These weeklies and a few story-books, loaned out by the pastor, are the only reading material of a village of five hundred and ninety-one souls. The bread eaten by the peasants is made of coarse black flour, baked once or at most twice a month, and eaten without butter. On Sunday morning a little beef or mutton is sometimes eaten by a few families, but otherwise no animal food is taken except in the form of sausage-meat. Children do not work in the fields until about ten years of age, nor is much work done by them for five or six years later, as from six to fifteen or sixteen years of age they are compelled to attend school. In summer, from June 24th to September 29th, there is no afternoon session of the school, and the children then help in the harvest. The toil of a peasant being so constant, is also done slowly and poorly. A wood-sawyer, for instance, holds and works his saw with only one hand, and draws a breath between each stroke.

A compulsory school law in the province of Hanover forces the peasants to study during ten years of their lives, and during this time