lOO AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



ever, turning his head, &quot; Stop thy maw am going to Ameri- 

 ky, aw tell thee.&quot; It was his &quot; missis,&quot; he said. 



&quot; Those were not your children that lay in the road f 



&quot; Yaaz they be foive of em.&quot; 



So we fell into a talk with him about his condition and 

 prospects ; but before I describe it, let me relieve my page 

 with a glimpse of rustic character of another sort. It is 

 one of the delightful memories of our later ramble on the 

 Rhine that writing of this incident recalls. A very simple 

 story, but illustrative in this connection of the difference 

 which the traveller every where finds between the English and 

 the German poor people. 



We had been walking for some miles, late in a dusky 

 evening, upon a hilly road in the Rhine land, with an old 

 peasant woman, who was returning from market, carrying a 

 heavy basket upon her head and two others in her hands. 

 She had declined to let us assist her in carrying them, and 

 though she had walked seven miles in the morning and now 

 nearly that again at night, she had overtaken us, and was 

 going on at a pace, that for any great distance we should have 

 found severe. (Of course, ladies, she wore the Bloomer skirt.) 

 At a turn of the road we saw the figure of a person standing 

 still upon a little rising ground before us, indistinct in the 

 dusk, but soon evidently a young woman. It is my child, 

 said the woman, hastily setting down her baskets and running 

 forward, so that they met and embraced each other half way 

 up the hill. The young woman then came down to us, and, 

 taking the great basket on her head, the two trudged on with 

 rapid and animated conversation, in kind tones asking and tell 

 ing of their experiences of the day, entirely absorbed with 

 each other, and apparently forgetting that we were with them, 

 until, a mile or two further on, we came near the village in 

 which they lived. 



