and scaring the crows and sparrows. The
missus, too, earned a little in harvest time,
and betwixt us all we managed, though
God knows how, just to live, and to keep
ourselves warm, though not too warm, I
can assure you. Didn't the children go to
school? Well, to the Sunday school, and
in winter now and then to the day school:
but you see we could not spare them for the
better part of the year; for as soon as they
growed up to be eight or nine they could
earn summat, however small, if it were
only picking up sticks in the woods and
road side to help to light the lire. It wasn't
much as they learned at the Sunday school,
only reading; no writing or ciphering—
just about as much as I learned when I was
a boy. I can read a little. I read the
Bible and the newspaper sometimes, but I
can' t write, and I don't understand newspapers
much, except the murders, the
robberies, the fires, and such like. The
missus can write a bit, and tried to teach
me; but I was too old to larn, and never
could make nothing on it. She taught Tom,
our oldest boy, to write, and Jane, our
oldest girl; but the children came on so
fast after a time, and she had so much to
do with managing them and mending their
clothes and screwing and scraping to feed
them that she had to give up teaching. I
kept my health and strength wonderfully
well—the Lord be praised. I think that if I
could have earned twenty-four shillings a
week instead of twelve I should have been
happy enough in good seasons. Did I never
think of going to America? Well, I dare
say I may have done. They say there's
plenty of land there, and few men—just the
reverse of what there is here; but how was
I to get to America, I should like to know?
I could not save a penny in a year, and it
would have cost a matter of forty pounds,
I have heerd, to pay our passage out.
Forty pounds! You might as well come
upon me for forty millions, or ask me to
pay the national debt! No; it was of no
use for me to think of America, and besides,
even if I had the money, I was too
old to go to America when I first heerd on
it. It's too late in the day at fifty-six
years of age to go to a new country, and to
a new people. I think my eldest boy, Tom,
would have gone with his wife and children
if he had had money enough; but it was
the same with him as with me. He got
married like a fool, as his father was
before him, when he was barely twenty;
but not being of such a good constitution
as me, he couldn't stand the work and the
trouble as I did; and though he's only
fifty now, he's an older man nor I am
at seventy. He's got eight children, and
one of them's a born idiot and another a
cripple. It's hard times for him, I think;
and if anything should happen to him the
whole family would have to go to the
workhouse. Any more of my children
married? Yes. My oldest daughter.
She was a tidy girl, and a pretty girl
too, and got into service at the vicar's.
She had good wages, and a good place—
plenty to eat and drink, and all her money
her own to buy clothes and ribbons with,
and sometimes at Christmas a pound to
spare to help her poor old father and
mother through the winter. But she did
not know when she was well off. She
would go and get married, after she had
been only three years in service, to a fellow
as I never could bear—a jobbing gardener,
who is a good deal too fond of his
beer and bad company to make a good
husband. She's never known what it was
to be comfortable since her marriage, and
wishes she was back again in service, with
a shilling to spare for a ribbon now and
then. But she has no shilling and no ribbon,
nor is likely to have. How many
grandchildren have I? Well, I think
there have been more than forty of them,
but a good many of 'em are dead—died
young, and I do sometimes think that if all
the children that are born into the world
lived and growed up to be men and women
that there wouldn't be half room enough in
the world for 'em, leastways not in England
and in our parish. You say it's wrong for
the poor to marry in this thoughtless manner.
Well, perhaps it is. I don't say it isn't;
but it's about the only comfort the poor
have got, though the comfort always brings
sorrow along with it, and most things do
in this world as far as I know on. It would
be rather hard lines if the birds and the
butterflies might mate, and men and
women might not unless they were rich
and had a hundred and fifty pounds a year,
and were squires, and dukes, and such
like. The missus? Aye, she's been dead
more 'an ten years now—rest her soul;
an' if she had been alive I should not a
gone into the workhouse to be separated
from her, but have got an out- door allowance,
and managed somehow to toddle
down to the grave alongside of her. She
was a good woman she was, and sorely
tried, and wears I hope a crown of glory
on her head in heaven at this moment.
' Blessed are the poor in spirit,' says our