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 Plow Monday, the day on which work was resumed, and the first day of labor also was marked by a feast.

says old Tusser, in his quaint rural poems. The spindle also had its festival. The harvest feast was one of equality, and an avowal, as it were, of those mutual necessities which bring men into union. On that day, masters and servants collected round the same table, and, mingling in the same conversation, did not appear to be brought into contact with each other by the complaisance of a superior desirous of rewarding his inferior, but by an equal right to the pleasures of the day:

Sowing-time, sheep-shearing, indeed, every epoch of interest in rural life, was celebrated by similar meetings—and banquets, and by games of all kinds. But what day could equal the first of May, brilliant with the joys of