164 TEN YEARS IN SWEDEN. 



cannot get about to beg. This yearly quota of grain is 

 divided among the several farmers in the district. I have heard 

 this practise much condemned, and it certainly does appear 

 to be a kind of traffic in human flesh. I cannot, how- 

 ever, see what other plan could be adopted in this thinly 

 populated country, where the houses are so wide apart, and 

 there are no unions or district workhouses as in England ; 

 and moreover very few are so utterly destitute as to have 

 no relation or acquaintance who will take him or her, so 

 the system, I consider, works very fairly. 



Besides, I really believe the Swedish peasant is generally 

 kindly disposed towards the poor and unfortunate, and these 

 poor old bodies are perhaps quite as kindly treated as the 

 paupers in our English unions, and they certainly are 

 much freer. I often used to stumble upon these old boys dur- 

 ing my summer rambles in the forest, where they regularly 

 waylaid me for a little bit of tobacco, which was all they 

 appeared to want. There is certainly, however, something 

 rather melancholy in the reflection that one can live long 

 enough to be of no use to any one, and have to be hawked 

 about to the end of the journey, to see who will keep us for 

 the lowest price. These old men are called ' ' root-grubbers," 

 and sometimes they are not let out for the whole year to one 

 farmer, but all the farmers in the parish, if their holdings 

 are small, take one or two of them in turn; they thus 

 travel round the village with their swag, live a week or 

 so with one farmer, do a little bit of work, then are passed 

 on to the next, and so on. When I lodged with the afore- 

 said peasant, we had one very nice old root-grubber who 

 used to pay us flying visits. He was a good-looking, quiet 

 old man, of near sixty, who had seen better days, and 

 showed it by his subdued air. Still he never complained. 

 The first time I saw him was I recollect at Christmas, a time 

 when of all others, the houseless and friendless are most to 

 be pitied. " Res est sacra miser," says the old Latin poet, 

 or in plain English, a person in affliction is a sacred thing ; 

 and never was a more beautiful sentiment uttered in any 

 language. I was determined that for one night at least the 



