NOVEMBER. 



ble to fireside enjoyments and occupations. Driven 

 from the fields and woods, where we have found so 

 much delight, so many objects of interest or employ- 

 ment, we may now sit within and hear the storm 

 rage around, conscious that the fruits of the earth 

 are secured, and that, like the bees in their hives, 

 we have not let the summer escape, but have laid 

 up stores of sweetness for the time of darkness and 

 dearth. In large farmhouses, many useful avoca- 

 tions may enliven the evening fireside. In some 

 districts, the men mend their own clothes and shoes ; 

 in others, various repairs of smaller implements, as 

 flails, sieves, etc. are done ; and it is now become a 

 laudable custom in many superior farms to en- 

 courage reading, and other means of mental im- 

 provement, which the continual engagements of a 

 rural labourer preclude during the summer. The 

 promotion of this spirit is highly to be desired ; no 

 part of our working population having been so 

 lamentably deficient in common knowledge as that 

 of farmers' servants. Through the summer they 

 have toiled from morning till night, and from day to 

 day incessantly; and their only interval of rest, 

 Sundays and winter nights, have been lost in drow- 

 siness. The cottager may usefully, by his winter 

 fire, construct bee-hives, nets, mole-traps, bird-cages, 

 etc. : with any of these employments I have more 

 sympathy than with the last, however. 



Of all men who pursue rural occupations, the 

 bird-catchers, especially the summer bird-catchers, 

 they who do not capture birds when they have con- 



