254 ECHOES OF OLD COUNTY LIFE. 



milk ; once make them wives, and they lean their backs 

 against their marriage certificate and defy you." But 

 my harvest celebrations did not only consist of song 

 and joke ; I tried to make the pleasant gatherings of 

 more permanent use, by shortly commenting on the 

 position of agriculture and explaining to my men 

 any new inventions or improvements which had been 

 adopted during the year. 



On taking my farm I determined to do my utmost to 

 improve the position of my labourers. I apportioned a 

 certain section of the farm to be used as allotments for 

 the labourers working thereon. I am now speaking of 

 the year 1853, and I kept up the system up to the time 

 I gave up the farm in 1879 ; for those twenty-six years 

 I found it had a marvellously good and beneficial effect. 

 I gave the men the very best land on the farm, and 

 close to the homestead and farmyard ; they were charged 

 the same amount per acre that I paid myself, with the 

 rates and taxes added ; no man had less than a rood, 

 nor more than half an acre, as I found practically that 

 this was quite as much as a man and his family could 

 cultivate, and that it amply supplied the family with 

 vegetables for their own consumption, and oftentimes 

 left them with an abundance over to sell. They had 

 full permission to fetch whatever amount of manure 

 they required from my farmyard, I, on my part, making 

 it a condition that their holdings should be well-culti- 

 vated and kept clean. On my harvest-home festival 

 we had a horticultural show of all the garden produce ; 

 I put the rents of their holdings together, which were 

 supplemented by the gift of a sovereign from my land- 



