SIR WATK1NS WYN. 175 



Staffordshire, had married a nice Welsh girl, and settled himself 

 very comfortably. He said wages were good here, and it did not 

 cost so much to live as it used to. He had a cottage in the vil- 

 lage ; the landlord, Sir Watkins Wyn, was an excellent man, and 

 his agent was very kind to poor people. He did not see any 

 need of grumbling, and, for his part, thought the world a pretty 

 fair world. 



After a good breakfast, in a room adorned with sporting pic- 

 tures and a likeness of Sir Watkins Wyn, as colonel of the local 

 yeomanry, I returned to talk with him. When he had work, his 

 wages were six dollars a week, but just now he was out of work. 

 The rent of his cottage and four roods of land was one hundred 

 and twenty dollars, and Sir Watkins paid the poor-rates. Sir 

 Watkins was not very generally liked by his tenants, 'because he 

 was not so liberal with them as his father ; but his father had 

 been extravagant, and run the estate deeply in debt, and he had 

 need to be more particular ; and he was sure he was always very 

 easy with poor folks. He had had a deduction made on his rent 

 more than once when the times were hard with him, and this 

 year the farmers all were allowed ten per cent, of their rents, 

 because corn is so low. 



I had told him I was from America, and he was asking me 

 some questions about it, when he suddenly stopped, fidgeted about 

 a moment, and then, looking at a woman coming across the street, 

 said, with a laughing, swaggering air, " There's my wife coming ; 

 now you'll see a specimen of a Welsh girl ! " His wife, a stout, 

 hard-looking woman, walked briskly in, stood up straight before 

 him, folded her arms, and, in a deep, quiet, determined way, gave 

 him a regular Candling. He tried for awhile to make a joke of 

 it, and to appease her. " Come now, missus, don't be hard upon 

 un' ; sit ye down now, and take a pint ; these gentlemen be from 

 Ameriky, and I talks with 'um about going there. Come now, 



