JANUARY 75 



themselves of them : First, their innate horror of change and of 

 the unknown ; and, secondly, reasons not unconnected with the 

 other sex. To emigrate with a family is difficult, and if they 

 emigrate as unmarried men, in nineteen cases out of twenty they 

 must leave some girl with whom they are more or less mixed up 

 behind them. Therefore, as such affairs begin early among this 

 class, they do not emigrate as yet except to London ; at least, 

 not in any great numbers. With the Irish, who have gone out to 

 people many lands, it is a different matter. 



Thus it comes about that the towns still leave us a decreasing 

 number of labourers who are content to stop in the village which 

 has been inhabited by their ancestors for hundreds of years, and 

 to till the fields that their forefathers tilled from the times of 

 the Tudors or Plantagenets, although, as I have said, it is very 

 noticeable that among the younger men can be found few good 

 ploughmen or yardmen. Indeed the lack of these skilled hands 

 is becoming one of the most serious questions, if not the most 

 serious, that the farmer has to face. 



In our part of the world a certain proportion of the lads go 

 for soldiers, and a still larger number become amphibious ; that 

 is to say, they take service on Lowestoft smacks during the 

 herring season. As a rule the smacksmen do better than the 

 soldiers, for the latter almost invariably return after their eight 

 years' service to find themselves absolutely unfitted at six-and- 

 twenty or so to follow the avocation of an agricultural labourer. 

 A few get situations as grooms I have two such men in my 

 employment at this moment ; but there is a general, though 

 frequently a very unjust, prejudice against them. The farmers 

 will have nothing to do with them, for they say, perhaps rightly, 

 that they have lost touch with the land, and are of little use upon it. 



I remember trying to persuade my bailiff to take on a young 

 fellow, the son of one of my horsemen, who had come home from 

 his spell of short service, but without result. He was physically a 

 fine man, and very willing, but the answer was that though he might 

 be all very well for odd jobs, he was no good as a labourer. Fail- 



