Page:The English Peasant.djvu/249

 They said they tried hard for it. One observed, "Faith is a fine thing, as the good Book says."

On the road I stopped a man in a coal-cart, who turned out to be quite a character. He had been an agricultural labourer, and had waggoned for a farmer in Wellesbourne for years. He evidently considered himself a practical man, and a great deal wiser than his employer.

"Often," said he, "have I told the maayster, 'You'd better go home, maayster, and not stop bothering me. I know what's best to do to the land.' What could maayster know? He was only a wool-winder."

I observed that wages did not make so much difference as one might suppose. That one man's house on 12s. a week was a model of comfort; another's, on the same wage, was a den of misery.

"You're right, maayster," he replied; "and I daresay you will agree with me when I tell you what makes the difference;" and then, leaning forward, the crow's-feet round his eyes all puckering up with delight, he exclaimed with emphasis, "It's a good wife that makes a house a comfort! A good wife 'll make 12s. go as far as another would a guinea."

Next day, in the neighbourhood of Stratford, in the hamlet of Shottery, I saw enough to give colour to a statement made the other day in the Chamber of Agriculture at Warwick, by an eminent Warwickshire farmer, that it was his opinion that the cottages lay at the root of the present difficulty.

One of the villagers, accompanied by her little son, was crossing the meadow. About Stratford, she said, the labourers had only 11s. a week up till lately; now they were to have 12s. They were not allowed to keep pigs, and had no allotments. She had a cottage with two rooms up-stairs and a pantry below, for which she paid 1s. 9d. a week. Her little boy went to school; but their betters need not be afraid that these young rustics are taught any superfluous lore, since this Shottery boy, living probably within a stone's throw of Anne Hathaway's cottage, had never heard of the name of William Shakspeare. Nor was he a singular exception, for I asked a baker's boy, who gave me a ride in his cart, and who lived at Hampton Lucy, close to Charlcote