Page:The English Peasant.djvu/172

 lasts—and as he never has ache nor pain, he is scarcely likely to trouble himself much with this consideration—he does not wait to save enough to buy furniture or even clothes, but as soon as he has man's wages he takes his lass to church, and launches on the troubled sea of matrimony.

Two rooms in a small row content him, and there is always some benevolent broker willing to supply the necessary furniture. Then as to clothes, his credit is good here also. Every one knows him, and that he is not likely to run away just as he has taken to himself a wife. Our young waggoner is so ignorant that he cannot be expected to look beyond his nose in this or in any other particular unconnected with the management of horses. His duties to a possible posterity, or to society through them, are considerations quite beyond his "tether;" all he knows is that he will be more comfortable. And who can blame him if the description given a few years ago of the domestic comfort he enjoyed when lodged on a farm still be true? An essay by the Rev. E. O. Hammond, of Sundridge, addressed to the Sittingbourne Agricultural Association in 1856, thus describes his lodging:—

"He returns home after a long day spent in the service of his master, generally fatigued, often wet since the morning. Here and there, but not generally, there is a fire accessible, where he may restore his frozen circulation, and do something at least towards drying his wearing apparel. When a little comfortable, he may take a candle and amuse himself according to his taste. Ordinarily there is no fire and no light for the farm servant when the toil of the day is done. If there is a fire for his use he must light it himself, or if candles, he must either buy them or economise his stable allowance of five for two nights. Not unfrequently he will sacrifice his supper to go straight to bed, on which, having first deposited his boots to prevent them from freezing, he ensconces his person between a pair of sheets that defy all the colours of the rainbow for a hue that will match them. The stench of the chamber is intolerable in many cases, and no wonder, under the occupation of stable and labour-stained men and clothes, the men varying in number from three or four to nine or ten in a room on very large farms, and sleeping in most cases two in a bed."

A Kent woman is no more accustomed to idleness than her