THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
373 
March 11. 
A WAY TO BE MISERABLE. 
By the Authoress of “ My Flowers," d;c. 
| It is a very sad thing to see the thoughtless, careless way 
in which young people in the humbler classes take upon 
; themselves to marry; and it is the cause of much of the 
poverty and distress we see around us. Almost as soon as 
a lad can earn his own bread, we hear his banns “ put up.” 
Usually with some idle, ignorant girl, who knows nothing, 
except how to work in the fields; and in many cases who 
has been driven out of the copses with a knife and a 
bundle of green wood cut from the trees and hedges, in¬ 
stead of lawfully picking up dead sticks, and honestly 
leaving that which she knew was not hers to take or touch. 
Parents are never asked about the matter ; they let their 
children take care of themselves at such an early age, that 
their authority is quite gone long before the boy or girl 
can discern between their right hand and their left; and the 
consequence is, of course, that when a young couple choose 
to marry, they ask no questions, and if objections are made, 
there is no power on the parents side to make them obey. 
Very few parents, indeed, keep their children under proper 
control, and even when they clo, it is surprising and grievous 
to see how early they begin to think and act for themselves, 
and how soon poverty, distress, and suffering, begin to be 
seen and felt. 
These things tend very much to make the state of the poor 
distressing, far more so than it need to be. A boy and girl 
marrying upon trifling wages may get on somehow or other 
as long as they are alone, but when a family rises round 
them, the misery and want they all endure is beyond the 
imagination of those who do not see them in their cottages, 
and do not care to observe what is going on. The wife 
knows nothing—she cannot make a cup of gruel, nor bake 
bread, nor tell how to make her husband and children com¬ 
fortable ; all is scramble, discomfort, and dirt; while the 
husband, himself a boy, gets angry and violent, or vexed 
and soured, and goes off to the idle-corner and the beer¬ 
house. 
Under the most favourable circumstances, early marriages 
among the poor are much to be regretted. A case under 
our own eyes shows this very clearly. The young woman 
lived for some years in our own family, and a better creature 
seldom entered a house. She was the very best-tempered, 
gentle-hearted, honest girl possible; nothing could make her 
cross, and her smiling face was never clouded. Sally had 
been brought up by her grandmother very strictly, and very 
well. When she left our service to take a higher situation 
than that for which we required her, she conducted herself 
properly, and only left the family to marry. A very steady, 
excellent young man, who had been a lodger for years with 
Sally’s grandmother, had attached himself to her, and no 
objection could be made to him; but she was very young; 
her grandmother knew the cares and troubles of married 
life, and she laid them all down with simple but earnest 
plainness before her. Poor Sally! She could not see a 
bit of it. Thomas was so steady and good; they had known 
each other nearly all their lives, and she was herself so 
merry-hearted and good-tempered, that it did seem as if 
nothing really could go wrong. The grandmother shook 
her wiser and more experienced head; but the marriage 
took place, and the young people lived for a time under her 
| roof. All went on well for a year or two ; but Betty was old 
and particular in her ways ; and Sally and her husband 
: began to wish for a cottage of their own, where they could 
have their own little ways and fancies. 
Scarcely had they settled themselves in their own humble 
home, and Sally enjoyed her baby in her own way, without 
the anxious interference of an older head, than her troubles 
and difficulties began. Thomas was seized with illness, and 
for some weeks poor Sally was in trouble and alarm for him, 
but when he became better, she was troubled for other 
things too. Regular work had brought regular wages; but 
when there was no work or wages, illness, the expenses 
\ attending illness, and the craving appetite of recovery, she 
began to think and feel, and sigh and weep. The shop 
accounts were growing sadly long, and it took a very long 
time for these honest creatures to pay up what they owed, 
and then not without depriving themselves of much of the 
food they needed. From this time Sally’s open brow was 
clouded ; she had much to struggle with—much to endure ; 
her faultless temper was never ruffled, but she could not 
smile as she did before, and she was silent as to the happi 
ness of her married life. She always spoke highly of her 
husband’s steadiness and industrious habits. He never 
went into a beer-house, and brought his money home to 
her; but still the smile was gone, and care settled upon 
Sally’s youthful countenance. 
Since that period Sally became the mother of two more 
children, one of them a sickly little creature, requiring care 
and watchfulness, and Thomas sometimes remained long 
out of work, until they became deeply and painfully in debt. 
All this tried them both, but the mother felt it the most 
severely, and I believe many tears were shed as she sat in 
her cottage alone. “ Oh ! if w 7 e had but waited a few years 
longer,” she has said in our hearing, over and over again— 
“ If I had but minded what grandmother said; but there, I 
thought I knew best, like all young people, and when I 
found out I was wrong, it was too late.” 
Now this is one of the most favourable cases of early 
marriage. Thomas is some years older than his wife, a man 
of steadiness, and seriousness, too; they are both well prin¬ 
cipled, and anxious to do all that is right. But what must 
an early marriage be, when the youth is unsteady, unsettled 
in the knowledge of right and wrong, fond of idle, worthless 
company, and taking some equally ignorant, untidy girl, 
with flowers under her bonnet, and a dirty gown, just be¬ 
cause he wants some one to “ do for him,” as they express 
it, which means the duties a wife ought to fulfil, and of 
which the one he chooses knows and can do nothing. Can 
such a beginning of ignorance, folly, and poverty, end other¬ 
wise than miserably ? If young people would only wait 
until a few more years had given them a little more know¬ 
ledge and fitness for their solemn and important under¬ 
taking ; if they would only wait until they could mend their 
husband’s clothes; imtil they knew how to keep a house 
clean, and to boil a potato ; flow to make their scanty means 
go further, and their home comfortable to a poor man 
weary and wet with day-labour; there would not be so great 
an amount of wretchedness and evil in a parish as there is 
now. 
It is a difficult thing to persuade the young; but if their 
parents would bring them up “ in the nurture and admo¬ 
nition of the Lord,” they would have power to make them 
obedient at any rate, until they were older, wiser, and more 
fitted to become wives and mothers. Early marriages 
| amongst the better classes are not always the happiest; but 
among the poor they are full of disaster. If parents will 
only “ train up their children in the way they should go,” a 
I blessing will surely go with them, and evils that now abound, 
might, by the Grace of God, be greatly softened, if not pre¬ 
vented entirely. 
THE GOLDEN AND THE SILVER PHEASANTS. 
(Continued from page 359.) 
In several districts of England, the north especially, 
various breeds of fowls are styled “ pheasant breeds,” the 
name extending to “ golden pheasant,” “ silver pheasant,” 
and even “blue pheasant” fowls. It is a vulgar error, 
seriously entertained as an indisputable article of faith, 
that these prettily-feathered occupants of our poultry-yard 
derive their peculiarities and their parentage from some 
ancient intermixture with members of the genus Phasiamis. 
The extreme improbability (to speak in gentle terms) of 
this hypothesis, I need not dilate on here, having fully 
entered into it elsewhere. Birds of this supposed fitz- 
pheasant origin, have been obligingly forwarded to me from 
more than one English county, either as enigmas for me 
to guess the solution of their puzzling existence on earth, 
or as proofs sufficient to convert any reasonable poultry- 
student from his heretical scepticism. They were not to be 
distinguished from Bolton Bays or Golden Hamburghs,— 
sub-varieties of that peculiar type of fowl, comprising several 
modifications of one general plan of form and proportion, 
to which the name of Hamburgh fowls has been attached, 
for the sake of clearly separating them from other mai’kecl 
types of domestic Galli. But one point alone would make 
the presence of pheasant blood very doubtful. The Ham- 
