102 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



ofltimes he could get nothing more than dry bread for his 

 family to eat. It was a common thing that they had nothing 

 to eat but dry bread. He got the flour -fine, white wheaten 

 flour from the master. They kept a hog, and had so much 

 bacon as it would make to provide them with meat for the 

 year. They also had a little potato patch, arid he got cheese 

 sometimes from the master. He had tea, too, to his supper. 

 The parish gave him his rent and he never was called upon 

 for tithes, taxes, or any such thing. In addition to his wages, 

 the master gave him, as he did all the labourers, three quarts 

 either of cider or beer a-day, sometimes one and sometimes 

 the other. He liked cider best thought there was &quot; more 

 strength to it.&quot; Harvest-time they got six quarts, and some 

 times, when the work was very hard, he had had ten quarts. 

 He had heard of America and Australia as countries that 

 poor folks went to he did not well know why, but supposed 

 wages were higher, and they could live cheaper. His master 

 and other gentlemen had told him about those places, and the 

 labouring people talked about them among themselves. They 

 had talked to him about going there. (America and Aus 

 tralia were all one two names for the same place, for all that 

 he knew.) He thought his master or the parish would pro 

 vide him the means of going, if he wanted them to. We 

 advised him to emigrate then, by all means, not so much for 

 himself as for his children the idea of his bringing seven, or 

 it might yet be a dozen, more beings into the world to live 

 such dumb-beast lives, was horrible to us. I told him that in 

 America his children could go to school, and learn to read and 

 write and to enjoy the revelation of God ; and as they grew up 

 they would improve their position, and might be land-owners 

 and farmers themselves, as well off as his master ; and he 

 would have nothing to pay, or at most but a trifle that he 

 could gratefully spare, to have them as well educated as the 



