Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/243

Rh it in their structure. For each has a little shoproom attached to it generally under the same roof. Thus the whole business becomes a domestic industry or house employment for the family, and frequently every member, male or female, young or old, has his or her rod in the fire all the day long and often far into the night. Although they earn but little, they earn it at home, and the whole social operation and aspect of their industry is rather interesting. These little house-shops are scattered far and wide over the district, sometimes in little villages and hamlets, but often on high and breezy hills and behind the hedges of green and rural lanes. So they in the majority of cases really make comfortable little homes for honest and contented labourers, far better and more morally healthy than most of the tenements of better-paid mechanics in large towns. It is for this and similar reasons, and even without any intelligible reason. I always love to visit their busy hamlets and hear the music of their little clicking hammers, which do not disturb the birds, but seem to set them singing around the lowly roofs and cosy little gardens of the nailers with extra glee. Then sometimes you see potted flowers not only in the window of the living-room of the cottage but also in that of the forge-room, and other signs of comfort and social enjoyment. Perhaps this favourable impression of their condition I am now