GLANCING BACK. 203 



necessary to stoop very low to get inside this habitation 

 of an English agricultural labourer. The total length of 

 the hut was about 21 feet, its width 9 feet, and its 

 height, measured to the extreme point of the thatched 

 roof, about 10 feet ; the height of the walls, however, not 

 being so much as 6 feet. From the top of the walls was 

 carried up to a point the thatched roof, there being no 

 transverse beams or planks. In fact, had there been any, 

 we could not have stood upright in this hovel. There was, 

 of course, no second floor or ' upper storey ' to the place, 

 and the one small ground floor was divided in the middle 

 into two compartments, each being about 9 feet square, 

 one used for a bedroom and the other for a sitting-room. 

 The ground was irregularly paved with large stones, and 

 earth between and in their crevices. On our remarking 

 that the floor must be very damp, if not wet, in winter, the 

 man said, ' Oh no, sir, it don't " heave " much ' ; by which 

 he meant that the moisture did not come up very much 

 through the stones. From the thatch, in all directions, 

 hung festoons of spiders' webs, intermingled with sprays 

 of ivy, which, but for the squalor of the place, would have 



given a romantic appearance to the hut. John (the 



inhabitant of this ' cottage ') was a short, thick-set man, 

 sixty years of age. He had lived there, he told us, a quarter 

 of a century. His predecessors were a man, his wife, and 

 six children, all of whom, he said, had slept in the ' bedroom,' 

 9 feet square. He paid his master out of his wages 

 (averaging in his case five shillings a week !) 2, IDS. 

 a year rent for his ' cottage,' and ten shillings a year more 

 for the privilege of ' running ' his pig for John had a pig 

 as well as some fowls on his master's land. John also 

 rented one-eighth of an acre of ' potato ground,' for which 

 still out of his miserable wages he paid fifteen shillings a 

 year. And yet this man appeared happy amidst it all. 

 His poor patched garments looked singularly inconsistent 

 when seen in connection with his pleasant-looking face. 

 He spoke well of his employer. His cottage walls were 

 made of ' cob,' or hardened mud, and, sometime since, the 

 rain had come through the old thatched roof, and he thought 

 it was very good of his master to put a new roof and a new 

 door to his ' cottage ' when he asked him to do so. Our 

 hero had been married, but had lost his wife. One daughter 

 however, was still living, and she had married a policeman 

 in London. John said that when his cottage became no 

 longer fit according to his idea of fitness for a ' residence,' 

 the ' master ' intended to pull down the mud walls and 

 plough up the site." l 



In another district, not a very long distance from the 

 cottage last described, we found the greater number of 

 1 " Peasant Life in the West of England." 



