Page:The English Peasant.djvu/176

 pauperism. Even now parish relief is his anchor of refuge. The club is convenient in its way, but would never maintain itself if it were not held at the " Red Lion," and brought weekly visions of foaming pewter pots, and long clay pipes, and roaring songs, and loud thumping of delighted hob-nails. But he knows it has an ugly habit off casting off the older members, so he does not trust it, but drifts on to his last refuge, the Union workhouse.

Here he comes at last, his fine physique shattered by rheumatism, his hair silvered, his cheek still ruddy as a russet apple; but power of work nearly gone, he is glad to break a few stones on the road, or, when feebler still, to do odd jobs in the Union grounds, and to crawl about in the warm summer sun.

But life has become very sad —

His "old woman," sent to dwell in a different part of the house, soon breaks up; while the Union is so far from his home, that his children come rarely to see him, and gradually forget their aged father, until one day they receive a summons to remove the body. Then they go, and with some lamentations and some slight twinges of conscience, bring the old waggoner back again to the spot which gave him birth, and bury him—