were only the mere matter-of-fact, unfigurative
mud! Mud, however, is of divers kinds,
and is not always equally easy to wash off.
Let any one chance to take shelter under
the hedge of a field where the gang are at
work, and so be an unwilling listener to the
conversation that goes on, either among
themselves—roughened, vulgarised, almost
brutalised, by the very nature of their
employment, so ill-suited for civilised, not to say
Christian, women, who should be cleanly,
quiet, "keepers at home"—or, with coarse
men and lads, associated with them in their
toil, in whom the proper Home Influence
of women has long been unfelt and unexercised;
and let him say whether the gang
have not contracted far more of defilement
than can be washed away in a whole lifetime.

To the little children, too—the little, soft,
tender creatures, given us to bring up in trust
for their Heavenly Father—what harm is
done by this same employment of their
mothers in the field! I have walked through
Lightlands late and early, and these are
some of the pictures I have seen presented
by them day after day, and year after year.

The day is cold and bleak—Lightlands is a
bleak easterly-windy place—the cottage door
is locked, but by it, crying bitterly, and blue
with cold, tired with trying to play in the
ungenial weather, stands a child; a little
tender thing of five years old; and when I
ask her, "What the matter is!" she, sobbing,
says, "Mother ain't home, and I'm so cold,
and I want something to eat,"—and she sobs,
sticking her cold little fingers into her heavy
little eyes, more drearily than ever. Besides
the cold, and her hunger, and her tears, the
child is dirty, ragged, and wet, and in
everything neglected.

This is one true picture; here is another.

The cottage door is not locked; so I knock,
and, getting no answer, lift the latch and
enter. There, huddled over the fire, I find,
may be, six or seven babies of different
families, ranging from four to eight years old,
in dangerous companionship, with no grown
person to help them or care for them. Playing,
as children will play, one has a lighted
stick, which it twirls, to make fiery rings and
ribbons, regardless of the sparks that fall
on the tinder of their shabby, unmended,
unwashed, untidy little frocks: regardless, also,
of the eyes of one or two younger babies,
mere infants, left to these elder babies to
"take care of."

One feature is prominent in all these
scenes; the feature of neglect. For suppose a
case, even in which a mother puts her babies
to school, as it is called—which with very
young children, in most country parishes,
means giving them into tho care of some old
woman, past work herself, who is to look
after them, and keep them out of mischief.
The old woman, selected mostly because she
undertakes to "keep children," and not on
account of any fitness she may possess for
the office, is scarcely able to take care of
herself, much less the children. She sits in her
chair beside the fire, little heeding what they
are about; but now and then, in self-defence,
as they break out into quarrelling, screaming,
and disorder, she  rises tottering from her
seat, and, bent on quelling the disturbance,
without inquiring into the cause of it,
administers spiteful, hasty slaps to all alike, or
to as many as she can catch.

O, sad to think that the great enduring
lessons taught by ever-watchful motherly
love and tenderness, never can be learnt by
children thus neglected! Sadder yet to
think that their mothers' care not to teach
them; but, for a few more shillings at the
end of the week, leave their unspeakably
more precious possessions unimproved and
uncultivated.

Often little Mrs. Appleby has said to me,
in speaking of these neglectful mothers:

"I don't think they'd do it, ma'am, if only
their husbands got enough. Not but what
I do believe, if they was to look into it, they'd
find that they'd save more by stayin' at home,
than they do by goin' out to field; for look
at the sight o'clothes, ma'am, both their
own and their children's, which never do get
half mended; and look at the evenin's which
their husbands would pass at home, and
spend nothin', which on the accounts of
findin' the house uncomfortable when they
come home from work, they now often pass
at the White Horse, and spend a deal—a
deal, leastways for them."

"True, Mrs. Appleby; I only wish they
could see the matter in this light."

"Well, you see, ma'am," Mrs. Appleby
would apologise, "they get so addled and
stupified like, with always pinchin' and
pinchin', that they seem as if they couldn't
see straight before 'em; and so when Mr.
Oxley offers 'em work at eightpence or
ninepence a day, they say, in the middle of their
pinchin' and strivin', 'Well, here's a little
more we might earn—every little is a help.'
They see that, but they can't seem to see no
further."

With respect to the young unmarried
women who go out to field labour, their
fathers and mothers will tell you, that if they
cannot get them out to service, there is no
choice left for them but to go "into field:"
and of the difficulty in obtaining situations
for the daughters of labouring people, every
clergyman's wife, living in a country parish,
must have had some experience. For myself,
I can only say, that incessant requests about
getting a place for my Betsy, or my Sally, or
my Ann, have formed some of the lesser
troubles of my life. For, how can one
recommend to one's friends, housemaids whose
appreciation of a broom, or whose knowledge
of furniture, is of the most doubtful kind?
Or cooks, who, without question, have had no
experience as to the roasting or boiling of