The Hardest Labour 155 



herd to be relieved, and it is milk, milk, milk, all the 

 day long, till, never so strengthened with eelskin, the 

 weary wrists will no longer bear up a pair of hands 

 sore with cow-pox, the milkman's malady. Let the 

 athlete try it for a day, and he is like to admit ere 

 nightfall that till then he never knew what hard work 

 was. 



And this is not the hardest. My friend is a very 

 strong man, and one of the lightest of drinkers withal. 

 Out shooting you cannot tire him. I have seen him 

 come home as fresh as paint after tramping over all 

 sorts of soils, and after carrying a heavy bag for part 

 of a day that lasted from ten in the morning until dusk. 

 Well, one hot June day he undertook to go out with 

 the mowers at five, and work in moderately heavy 

 clover till six at night. He won his bet, but he vows 

 that the experience surpassed his worst surmises. 

 He drank a clean gallon of strong beer, with another 

 of cider ; and, save that he still felt thirstier, the liquor 

 had no effect on him ; and for more than a week he 

 was so stiff and sore that he could hardly walk. Yet 

 he is no carpet-knight, no lisping epicure, but a hale 

 and burly English gentleman, excellent with the 

 gloves, a great wrestler, a proper man of his hands 

 all round. No doubt ' the sweep of scythe in morn- 

 ing dew ' is a charming sound, but there is not much 

 poetry in the act of expending the force that furnishes 

 the song. And, in brief, as milking is the most irk- 

 some, so is mowing the most laborious of rural tasks. 



