274 AN AMERKAN FARMER IX EXGLAXD. 



common thing that they had nothing to eat but dry bread. He 

 got the flour -fine, white wheaten flour from the master. They 

 kept a hog, and had so much bacon as it would make to provide 

 them with meat for the year. They also had a little potato patch, 

 and he got cheese sometimes from the master. He had tea, too, 

 to his supper. The parish gave him his rent, and he never was 

 called upon for tithes, taxes, or any such thing. In addition to 

 his wages, the master gave him, as he did all the laborers, three 

 quarts either of cider or beer a-day, sometimes one and sometimes 

 the other. He liked cider best thought there was "more 

 strength to it." Harvest-time they got six quarts, and sometimes, 

 when the work was very hard, he had had ten quarts. 



He had heard of America and Australia as countries that poor 

 folks went to he did not well know why, but supposed wages 

 were higher, and they could live cheaper. His master and other 

 gentlemen had told him about those places, and the laboring 

 people talked about them among themselves. They had talked 

 to him about going there. (America and Australia were all one 

 two names for the same place, for all that he knew.) He 

 thought his master or the parish would provide him the means 

 of going, if he wanted. We advised him to emigrate then, by all 

 means, not so much for himself as for his children ; the idea of 

 his bringing seven, or it might yet be a dozen, more beings into 

 the world to live such dumb-beast lives, was horrible to us. I 

 told him that in America his children could go to school, and 

 learn to read and write and to enjoy the revelation of God ; and 

 as they grew up they would improve their position, and might be 

 land-owners and farmers themselves, as well off as his master; and 

 he would have nothing to pay, or at least but a trifle that he could 

 gratefully spare, to have them as well educated as the master's son 

 was being here ; that where I came from the farmers would be 

 glad to give a man like him, who could " plow and sow and reap 



