286 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
Ten cents a week may not seem worth a 
whole day’s journey on foot, but by the Fayal 
standard it is not unprofitable. The usual rate 
of wages for an able-bodied man is sixteen cents 
a day ; and an acquaintance of ours, who had 
just got a job on the roads at thirty cents a 
day, declined a good opportunity to emigrate to 
America, on the ground that it was best to let 
well alone. Yet the price of provisions is by 
no means very low, and the difference is chiefly 
in abstinence. Fuel and clothing cost little, 
however, sincé little is needed, — except that 
no woman thinks herself really respectable until 
she has her great blue cloak, which requires an 
outlay of from fifteen to thirty dollars, though 
the whole remaining wardrobe may not be 
worth half that. The poorer classes pay about 
a dollar a month in rent ; they eat fish several 
times a week and meat twice or thrice a year, 
living chiefly upon the coarsest corn bread, with 
yams and beans. Still they contrive to have 
their luxuries. A soldier's wife, an elderly 
woman, said to me pathetically, “ We have six 
vintems (twelve cents) a day, —my husband 
smokes and I take snuff, — and how are we to 
buy shoes and stockings?” But the most ex- 
treme case of economy which I discovered was 
that of a poor old woman, unable to tell her 
own age, who boarded with a poor family for 
