THE UNLETTERED HERD- BOY. 15 



several of the farms in the neighbourhood, lodging with his 

 employers, but coming home to his mother when he could. 

 While thus engaged, we catch occasional glimpses of the life 

 he led and the varied experiences through which such a 

 youth had .to pass in the rude farm life of that time. 



In the first place he went to, his treatment was very 

 harsh. He was then a simple-looking lad, shy and retiring, 

 and his real vigour was hidden under a cloud of bashfulness 

 which enveloped him more or less all his life. Being more 

 inclined to bear than to fight, he was of the very type that 

 invited the unkindly attentions of the youthful tyrants of 

 his own age, when he came across their path ; and the 

 extent to which rough practical joking was then carried 

 amongst farm servants, as told in many a narrative, is now 

 simply incredible. 



Poor Johnnie, for example, got his thick hair filled with 

 the chaff of barley, which has often been made an instru- 

 ment of cruel trickery. The pain caused by its stiff sticky 

 beard is very irritating, and it is impossible to rid the hair 

 of it unless with the assistance of another, which John 

 found in his mother. What was still worse, they filled 

 his head with those unclean parasites from which his 

 watchful mother had kept him free, as she had now again 

 to do. But his treatment was otherwise bad. Though 

 drenched with rain while tending the cattle, he was not 

 allowed to go near the fire after they had been stalled 

 in the evening ; and he had often to retire as he was to 

 his comfortless couch in an outhouse, where he poured the 

 water from his shoes, wrung his wet stockings as dry as 

 he could, and had to put them on again in this state next 

 morning. His usage, however, was not everywhere so 



