372 THE EULOGY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES. 



cities that certain parts of butchers' meat can be 

 bought just as cheap, and will make more savoury 

 and nutritive food ; and even now, with the present 

 high price of meat, a certain portion would be advan- 

 tageous. In vain ; the labourers obstinately adhere 

 to the pig, and the pig only. When, however, an op- 

 portunity does occur, the amount of food they will eat 

 is something astonishing. Once a year, at the village 

 club dinner, they gormandize to repletion. In one in- 

 stance I knew of a man eating a plate of roast beef 

 (and the slices are cut enormously thick at these 

 dinners), a plate of boiled beef, then another of boiled 

 mutton, and then a fourth of roast mutton, and a fifth 

 of ham. He said he could not do much to the bread 

 and cheese ; but didn't he go into the pudding ! I 

 have even heard of men stuffing to the fullest extent 

 of their powers, and then retiring from the table to 

 take an emetic of mustard and return to a second gorg- 

 ing. There is scarcely any limit to their power of ab- 

 sorbing beer. I have known reapers and mowers 

 make it their boast that they could lie on their backs 

 and never take the wooden bottle (in the shape of a 

 small barrel) from their lips till they had drunk a 

 gallon, and from the feats I have seen I verily believe 

 it a fact. The beer they get is usually poor and thin, 

 though sometimes in harvest the farmers bring out a 

 taste of strong liquor, but not till the work is nearly 

 over ; for from this very practice of drinking enormous 

 quantities of small beer the labourer cannot drink 

 more than a very limited amount of good liquor with- 

 out getting tipsy. This is why he so speedily gets in- 

 ebriated at the alehouse. While mowing and reaping 

 many of them lay in a small cask. 



