The shepherd has a distinct individuality, and is generally a much more observant man in his own sphere than the ordinary labourer. He knows every single field in the whole parish, what kind of weather best suits its soil, and can tell you without going within sight of a given farm pretty much what condition it will be found in. Knowledge of this character may seem trivial to those whose days are pa.s.sed indoors; yet it is something to recollect all the endless fields in several square miles of country. As a student remembers for years the type and paper, the breadth of the margin--can see, as it were, before his eyes the bevel of the binding and hear again the rustle of the stiff leaves of some tall volume which he found in a forgotten corner of a library, and bent over with such delight, heedless of dust and 'silver-fish' and the gathered odour of years--so the shepherd recalls _his_ books, the fields; for he, in the nature of things, has to linger over them and study every letter: sheep are slow.

When the hedges are grubbed and the gra.s.s grows where the hawthorn flowered, still the shepherd can point out to you where the trees stood--here an oak and here an ash. On the hills he has often little to do but ponder deeply, sitting on the turf of the slope, while the sheep graze in the hollow, waiting for hours as they eat their way. Therefore by degrees a habit of observation grows upon him--always in reference to his charge; and if he walks across the parish off duty he still cannot choose but notice how the crops are coming on, and where there is most 'keep.' The shepherd has been the last of all to abandon the old custom of long service. While the labourers are restless, there may still be found not a few instances of shepherds whose whole lives have been spent upon one farm. Thus, from the habit of observation and the lapse of years, they often become local authorities; and when a dispute of boundaries or water rights or right of way arises, the question is frequently finally decided by the evidence of such a man.

Every now and then a difficulty happens in reference to the old green lanes and bridle-tracks which once crossed the country in every direction, but get fewer in number year by year. Sometimes it is desired to enclose a section of such a track to round off an estate: sometimes a path has grown into a valuable thoroughfare through increase of population; and then the question comes, Who is to repair it? There is little or no doc.u.mentary evidence to be found--nothing can be traced except through the memories of men; and so they come to the old shepherd, who has been stationary all his life, and remembers the condition of the lane fifty years since. He always liked to drive his sheep along it--first, because it saved the turnpike tolls; secondly, because they could graze on the short herbage and rest under the shade of the thick bushes. Even in the helplessness of his old age he is not without his use at the very last, and his word settles the matter.

In the winter twilight, after a fall of snow, it is difficult to find one's way across the ploughed fields of the open plain, for it melts on the south of every furrow, leaving a white line where it has ledged on the northern side, till the furrows resemble an endless succession of waves of earth tipped with foam-flecks of snow. These are dazzling to the eyes, and there are few hedges or trees visible for guidance. Snow lingers sometimes for weeks on the northern slopes of the downs--where shallow dry d.y.k.es, used as landmarks, are filled with it: the dark ma.s.s of the hill is streaked like the black hull of a ship with its line of white paint. Field work during what the men call 'the dark days afore Christmas' is necessarily much restricted and they are driven to find some amus.e.m.e.nt for the long evenings--such as blowing out candles at the ale-house with muzzle-loader guns for wagers of liquor, the wind of the cap alone being sufficient for the purpose at a short distance.

The children never forget Saint Thomas's Day, which ancient custom has consecrated to alms, and they wend their way from farmhouse to farmhouse throughout the parish; it is usual to keep to the parish, for some of the old local feeling still remains even in these cosmopolitan times.

At Christmas sometimes the children sing carols, not with much success so far as melody goes, but otherwise successfully enough; for recollections of the past soften the hearts of the crustiest.

The young men for weeks previously have been practising for the mumming--a kind of rude drama requiring, it would seem, as much rehearsal beforehand as the plays at famous theatres. They dress in a fantastic manner, with masks and coloured ribbons; anything grotesque answers, for there is little attempt at dressing in character. They stroll round to each farmhouse in the parish, and enact the play in the kitchen or brewhouse; after which the whole company are refreshed with ale, and, receiving a few coins, go on to the next homestead. Mumming, however, has much deteriorated, even in the last fifteen or twenty years. On nights when the players were known to be coming, in addition to the farmer's household and visitors at that season, the cottagers residing near used to a.s.semble, so that there was quite an audience.

Now it is a chance whether they come round or not.

A more popular pastime with the young men, and perhaps more profitable, is the formation of a bra.s.s band. They practise vigorously before Christmas, and sometimes attain considerable proficiency. At the proper season they visit the farms in the evening, and as the houses are far apart, so that only a few can be called at in the hours available after work, it takes them some time to perambulate the parish. So that for two or three weeks about the end of the old and the beginning of the new year, if one chances to be out at night, every now and then comes the unwonted note of a distant trumpet sounding over the fields. The custom has grown frequent of recent years, and these bands collect a good deal of money.

The ringers from the church come too, with their hand-bells and ring pleasant tunes--which, however, on bells are always plaintive--standing on the crisp frozen gra.s.s of the green before the window. They are well rewarded, for bells are great favourites with all country people.

What is more pleasant than the jingling of the tiny bells on the harness of the cart-horses? You may hear the team coming with a load of straw on the waggon three furlongs distant; then step out to the road, and watch the ma.s.sive yet shapely creatures pull the heavy weight up the hill, their glossy quarters scarcely straining, but heads held high showing the n.o.ble neck, the hoofs planted with st.u.r.dy pride of strength, the polished bra.s.s of the harness glittering, and the bells merrily jingling! The carter, the thong of his whip nodding over his shoulder, walks by the shaft, his boy ahead by the leader, as proud of his team as the sailor of his craft: even the whip is not to be lightly come by, but is chosen carefully, bound about with rows of brazen rings; neither could you or I knot the whipcord on to his satisfaction.

For there is a certain art even in so small a thing, not to be learned without time and practice; and his pride in whip, harness, and team is surely preferable to the indifference of a stranger, caring for nothing but his money at the end of the week. The modern system--men coming one day and gone the next--leaves no room for the growth of such feelings, and the art and mystery of the craft loses its charm. The harness bells, too, are disappearing; hardly one team in twenty carries them now.

Those who labour in the fields seem to have far fewer holidays than the workers in towns. The latter issue from factory and warehouse at Easter, and rush gladly into the country: at Whitsuntide, too, they enjoy another recess. But the farmer and the labourer work on much the same, the closing of banks and factories in no way interfering with the tilling of the earth or the tending of cattle. In May the ploughboys still remember King Charles, and on what they call 'shick-shack day'

search for oak-apples and the young leaves of the oak to place with a spray of ash in their hats or b.u.t.ton-holes: the ash spray must have even leaves; an odd number is not correct. To wear these green emblems was thought imperative even within the last twenty years, and scarcely a labourer could be seen without them. The elder men would tell you--as if it had been a grave calamity--that they could recollect a year when the spring was so backward that not an oak leaf or oak-apple could be found by the most careful search for the purpose. The custom has fallen much into disuse lately: the carters, however, still attach the ash and oak leaves to the heads of their horses on this particular day.

Many village clubs or friendly societies meet in the spring, others in autumn. The day is sometimes fixed by the date of the ancient feast.

The club and fete threaten, indeed, to supplant the feast altogether: the friendly society having been taken under the patronage of the higher ranks of residents. Here and there the feast-day, however (the day on which the church was dedicated), is still remembered, as in this village, where the elder fanners invite their friends and provide liberally for the occasion. Some of the gipsies still come with their stalls, and a little crowd a.s.sembles in the evening; but the glory of the true feast has departed.

The elder men, nevertheless, yet reckon by the feast-day; it is a fixed point in their calendar, which they construct every year, of local events. Such and such a fair is calculated to fall so many days after the first full moon in a particular month; and another fair falls so long after that. An old man will thus tell you the dates of every fair and feast in all the villages and little towns ten or fifteen miles round about. He quite ignores the modern system of reckoning time, going by the ancient ecclesiastical calendar and the moon. How deeply the ancient method must have impressed itself into the life of these people to still remain a kind of instinct at this late day!

The feasts are in some cases identified with certain well-recognised events in the calendar of nature; such as the ripening of cherries. It may be noticed that these, chancing thus to correspond pretty accurately on the average with the state of fruit, are kept up more vigorously than those which have no such aid to the memory. The Lady-Day fair and Michaelmas fair at the adjacent market town are the two best recognised holidays of the year. The fair is sometimes called 'the mop,' and stalwart girls will walk eight or nine miles rather than miss it.

Maidservants in farmhouses always bargain for a holiday on fair day.

These two main fairs are the Bank Holidays of rural life. It is curious to observe that the developments of the age, railroads and manufactories, have not touched the traditional prestige of these gatherings.

For instance, you may find a town which, by the incidence of the railroad and the springing up of great industries, has shot far ahead of the other sleepy little places; its population may treble itself, its trade be ten times as large, its attractions one would imagine incalculably greater. Nothing of the kind: its annual fair is not nearly so important an event to the village mind as that of an old-world slumberous place removed from the current of civilisation. This place, which is perhaps eight or nine miles by road, with no facilities of communication, has from time immemorial had a reputation for its fair.

There, accordingly, the scattered rural population wends, making no account of distance and very little of weather: it is a country maxim that it always rains on fair day, and mostly thunders. There they a.s.semble and enjoy themselves in the old-fashioned way, which consists in standing in the streets, buying 'fairings' for the girls, shooting for nuts, visiting all the shows, and so on.

To push one's way through such a crowd is no simple matter; the countryman does not mean to be rude, but he has not the faintest conception that politeness demands a little yielding. He has to be shoved, and makes no objection. A city crowd is to a certain extent mobile--each recognises that he must give way. A country crowd stand stock still.

The thumping of drums, the blaring of trumpets, the tootling of pan-pipes in front of the shows, fill the air with a din which may be heard miles away, and seem to give the crowd intense pleasure--far more than the crack band of the Coldstream Guards could impart. Nor are they ever weary of gazing at the 'pelican of the wilderness' as the showman describes it--a mournful bird with draggled feathers standing by the entrance, a traditional part of his stock-in-trade. One attraction-- perhaps the strongest--may be found in the fact that all the countryside is sure to be there. Each labourer or labouring woman will meet acquaintances from distant villages they have not seen or heard of for months. The rural gossip of half a county will be exchanged.

In the autumn after the harvest the gleaning is still an important time to the cottager, though nothing like it used to be. Reaping by machinery has made rapid inroads, and there is not nearly so much left behind as in former days. Yet half the women and children of the place go out and glean, but very few now bake at home; they have their bread from the baker, who comes round in the smallest hamlets. Possibly they had a more wholesome article in the olden time, when the wheat from their gleanings was ground at the village mill, and the flour made into bread at home. But the cunning of the mechanician has invaded the ancient customs; the very sheaves are now to be bound with wire by the same machine that reaps the corn. The next generation of country folk will hardly be able to understand the story of Ruth.

CHAPTER SIX.

THE HAMLET--COTTAGE ASTROLOGY--GHOST LORE--HERBS--THE WAGGON AND ITS CREW--STILES--THE TRYSTING-PLACE--THE THATCHER--SMUGGLERS--AGUE.

In most large rural parishes there is at least one small hamlet a mile or two distant from the main village. A few houses and cottages stand loosely scattered about the fields, no two of them together; so separated, indeed, by hedges, meadows, and copses as hardly to be called even a hamlet. The communication with the village is maintained by a long, winding narrow lane; but foot-pa.s.sengers follow a shorter path across the fields, which in winter is sure to be ankle-deep in mud, by the gateways and stiles. The lane, at the same time, is crossed by a torrent, which may spread out to thirty yards wide in the hollow, shallow at the edges, but swift and deep in the middle.

If you wait a couple of hours it will subside, as the farmers lower down the brook pull up the hatches to let the flood pa.s.s. If you are in a hurry, you must climb up into the double mound beside the lane, and force your way along it between thorns and stoles, till you reach the channel through which the current is rushing. Across that an old tree trunk will probably lie, and by grasping a bough as a handrail it is possible to get over. But either way, by lane or footpath, you are sure to get what the country folk call 'watchet' i.e. wet. So that in winter the hamlet is practically isolated; for even in moderately good weather the lane is an inch or two deep in finely puddled adhesive mud. It is so shaded by elms and thick hedges that the dirt requires a length of time to dry, while the pa.s.sage of hundreds of sheep tread and puddle it as only sheep can.

In summer the place is lovely; but then the inhabitants are one and all busy in the fields, and have little time for social intercourse or for travel into the next parish. It is ten to one if you knock at a cottage door you will find it locked, if indeed, you get so fax as that, a padlock being often on the garden gate. Being so isolated and apart from the current of modern life and manners, the hamlet folk retain something of the old-fashioned way of thinking. They do not believe their own superst.i.tions with the implicit credence of yore, but they have not yet forgotten them. I have known women, for instance, who seriously a.s.serted that such-and-such an aged person possessed a magic book which contained spells, and enabled her to foresee some kinds of coming events. The influence of the moon, so firm an article of faith among their forefathers, is not altogether overlooked; and they watch for the new moon carefully. If the crescent slopes, it will be wet weather. But if the horns of the crescent touch, or nearly, a vertical line, if it stands upright, then it will be fine. Something, too, must be allowed for the degree of sharpness of definition of the crescent, which reveals the state of the atmosphere. And the cottage astrologer has a whole table of the quarters, aspects, and so on, and lays much stress upon the day and hour of the change: indeed, it is a very complicated business to understand the moon.

The belief in the power of certain persons to 'rule the planets' is profound; so profound that neither ridicule, argument, nor authority will shake it in the minds of the hamlet girls, and it abides with them even when they are placed amidst the disenchanting realities of town life. When 'in service,' they buy dream-books, and consult fortune-tellers. The gipsies, in pa.s.sing through the country, choose the by-ways and lanes; they thus avoid the tolls, have a chance of poaching, and find waste places to camp in, though possibly something of the true nomadic instinct may urge them to leave the beaten tracks and wander over lonely regions. They camp near the hamlet as they travel to and from the great sheep fairs which are held upon the hills, and perhaps stay a few days; and by them, to some extent, the belief in astrology and palmistry is strengthened.

The carters, who have to spend some considerable time every day with their horses in the stable, still retain a large repertory of legendary ghost lore. They know the exact spot in the lane where, at a certain hour of the night, the white spectre of a headless horse, rushing past with incredible swiftness and without the sound of a hoof, brushes the very coat of the traveller, and immediately disappears in the darkness.

Another lane is haunted by a white woman, whose spectre crosses it in front of the spectator and then appears behind him. If he turns his head or looks on one side in order to escape the sight of the apparition, it instantly crosses to that side. Indeed, no matter in which direction he glances, the flickering figure floats before him, till, making a run for it, he pa.s.ses beyond the limits of the haunted ground.

Near by the hollow, where the stream crosses the lane, is another spirit, but of an indefinite kind, that does not seem to take shape, but causes those who go past at the time when it has power to feel a mortal horror. A black dog may be seen in at least two different places: the wayfarer is suddenly surprised to find a gigantic animal of the deepest jet trotting by his side, or he sees a dark shadow detach itself from the bushes and take the form of a dog. The black dog has perhaps more vitality, and survives in more localities, than all the apparitions that in the olden times were sworn to by persons of the highest veracity.

They may still be heard of in many a nook and corner. I have known people of the present day who were positive that there really was 'something' weird in the places where the dog was said to appear.

It is supposed that horses are peculiarly liable to take fright and run away, to shy, or stumble, and break their knees, at a certain spot in the road. They go very well till just on pa.s.sing the fatal spot a sudden fear seizes them as if they could see something invisible to men; sometimes they bolt headlong, sometimes stand stock still and shiver; or throw the rider by a rapid side movement. In the daytime--for this supernatural effect is felt in broad day as well as at night--the horse more frequently falls or stumbles, as if checked by an invisible force in the midst of his career. This, too, is a living superst.i.tion, and some persons will recount a whole string of accidents that have happened within a few yards; till at last, such is the force of iteration, the most incredulous admit it to be a series of remarkable coincidences.

These last two, the black dog and the dangerous place in the road, are believed in by people of a much higher grade than carters. Altogether, the vitality of superst.i.tion in the country is very much greater than is commonly suspected. It is now confined, as it were, to the inner life of the people: no one talks of such things openly, but only to their friends, and thus a stranger might remark on the total extinction of the belief in the supernatural. But much really remains.

The carters have a story about horses which had spent the night in a meadow being found the next morning in a state of exhaustion, as if they had been ridden furiously during the hours of darkness. They were totally unfit for work next day. Instances are even given where men have hidden in a tree with a gun, and when the horses began to gallop fired at something indistinct sitting on their haunches, which something at once disappeared, and the excitement ceased. But these things are said to have happened a long time ago.

So, also, there is a memory of a man digging stone in a quarry and distinctly hearing the strokes of a pick beneath him. When he wheeled his barrow the subterranean quarryman wheeled his, and shortly after he had shot the stones out there came a rumbling from below as if the other barrow had been emptied. The very quarry is pointed out where this extraordinary phenomenon took place. It is curious how a story of this kind, something like which is, I think, told of the Hartz Mountains, should have got localised in a limestone quarry so far apart in distance and character. How well I remember the ancient labourer who told me this legend as a boy! It is easy to philosophise on it now, and speculate upon the genesis of the tale, which may have originated in a cavernous hollow resounding to the tools; but then it was a reality, and I recollect always giving a wide berth to that quarry at night. As the old man told it, it was indeed hardly a legend; for he could disclose every detail, and what has here occupied a few sentences took him the best part of an hour to relate.

Now and then the western clouds after the sunset a.s.sume a shape resembling that of a vast extended wing, as of a gigantic bird in full flight--the extreme tip nearly reaching the zenith, the body of the bird just below the horizon. The resemblance is sometimes so perfect that the layers of feathers are traceable by an imaginative eye. This, the old folk say, is the wing of the Archangel Michael, and it bodes no good to the evil ones among the nations, for he is on his way to execute a dread command.

Herbs are still believed in implicitly by some. Not long since I met a labourer, one of the better cla.s.s too, whom I had known previously, and now found deeply depressed because of the death of a son. The poor fellow had had every attention; the clergyman had exerted himself, and wine and nourishing luxuries had not been spared, nor the best of medical advice. That he admitted, but still regretted one thing. There was a herb, which grew beside rivers, and was known to but a few, that was a certain cure for the kind of wasting disease which had baffled educated skill. There was an old man living somewhere by a river fifty miles away, who possessed the secret of this herb, and by it had accomplished marvellous cures. He had heard of him, but could not by any inquiry ascertain his exact whereabouts; and so his child died.

Everything possible had been done, but still he regretted that this herb had not been applied.

Nothing is done right now, according to the old men of the hamlet; even the hayricks are built badly and 'scamped.' The 'rickmaker' used to be an important person, generally a veteran, who had to be conciliated with an extra drop of good liquor before he could be got to set to work in earnest. Then he spread the hay here, and worked it in there, and had it trodden down at the edge, and then in the middle, and, like the centurion, sent men hither and thither. His rick, when complete, did not rise perpendicularly, but each face or square side sloped a little outwards--including the ends--a method that certainly does give the rick a very shapely look.

But now the new-fangled 'elevator' carries up the hay by machinery from the waggon to the top, and two ricks are run up while they would formerly have just been carefully laying the foundation for one of f.a.ggots to keep off the damp. The poles put up to support the rick-cloth interfere with the mathematically correct outward slope at the ends, upon which the old fellow prided himself; so they are carried up straight like the end wall of a cottage, and are a constant source of contempt to the ancient invalid. However, he consoles himself with the reflection that most of the men employed with the 'elevator' will ultimately go to a very unpleasant place, since they are continuously swearing at the horse that works it, to make him go round the faster.

After an old cart or waggon has done its work and is broken up, the wooden axletree, which is very solid, is frequently used for the top bar of a stile. It answers very well, and, being of seasoned wood that has received a good many coats of red paint, will last a long time. The life of a waggon is not unlike that of a ship. On the cradle it is the pride of the craftsman who builds it, and who is careful to reproduce the exact 'lines' which he learned from his master as an apprentice, and which have been handed down these hundred years and more. The builders of the Chinese junks are said never to saw a piece of timber into the shape required, nor to bend it by softening the fibres by hot steam, but always use a beam that has grown crooked naturally. This plan gives great strength, but it must take years to acc.u.mulate the necessary curved trees. The waggon-builder, in like manner, has a whole yard full of timber selected for much the same reason--because it naturally curves in the way he desires, or is specially fitted for his purpose.

For, like a ship, the true old-fashioned waggon is full of curves, and there is scarcely a straight piece of wood about it. Nothing is angular or square; and each piece of timber, too, is carved in some degree, bevelled at the edges, the sharp outline relieved in one way or another, and the whole structure like a ship, seeming buoyant, and floating as it were, easily on the wheels. Then the painting takes several weeks, and after that the lettering of the name; and when at last completed it is placed outside by the road, that every farmer and labourer who goes by may pause and admire. In about twelve months, if the builder be expeditious (for him), the new vessel may reach her port under the open shed at the farm, and then her life of voyages begins.

Her cargoes are hay and wheat and huge mountainous loads of straw, and occasionally hurdles for the shepherd. Nor are her voyages confined to the narrow seas of the fields adjoining home; now and then she goes on adventurous expeditions to distant market towns, carrying mayhap a cargo of oak-bark, stripped from fallen trees, to the tan-yard. Then she is well victualled for the voyage, and her course mapped out on the chart in order to avoid the Scylla of steep hills and stony ways and the Charybdis of tollgates, besides being duly cautioned against the sirens that chant so sweetly from the taps of the roadside inns. Or she sails down to the far-away railway station after coal--possibly two or more vessels in the same convoy--if the steam plough be at work and requires the constant services of these tenders.

She has her own special crew--her captain the carter--and for forecastle men a lad or two, and often a couple of able-bodied seamen in the shape of labourers, to help to load up. When on the more distant voyages to unknown sh.o.r.es, she takes a supercargo--the farmer's son--to check the bills of lading; for on those strange coasts who knows what treachery there may be brewing? There are arms aboard, in the form of forks or p.r.o.ngs; and commonly one or more pa.s.sengers go out in her--women with vast bundles and children--not to mention the merchandise of sugars and of teas from Cathay, which are shipped for delivery at half the cottages and farmsteads _en route_ homewards. Wherefore, you see, the captain had needs be a sober and G.o.dly man, having all these and manifold other responsibilities upon his mind.

Besides which he has to make a report upon the state of the crops on every farm he pa.s.ses, and what everybody is doing, and if they have begun reaping; also to hail every vessel he pa.s.ses outward or homeward bound, and enter her answers in his log, and to keep his weather-eye open and a sharp watch to windward, lest storms should arise and awake the deep, and if the gale increases to batten down his hatches and make all snug with the tarpaulin. He must bear in mind the longitude of those ports where there are docks, lest his team should cast a shoe or any of the running rigging want splicing, or the hull spring a leak--for the blacksmith's forges are often leagues apart, and he may lose his certificate if he strands his ship or founders on the open ocean of the downs. Sometimes, if the currents run unexpectedly strong, and he is deeply laden, he has to borrow or hire a tug from the nearest farm, getting an extra horse to pull up the hill.

When he reaches harbour, and has leave ash.o.r.e, a jollier seaman never cracked a whip. Perhaps the happiest time with the ploughboys is when they are out with the waggon, having a little change, no harder work than walking, sips at the 'pots' handed to the captain by his mates, and nothing to think about. Nor was there ever a more popular song in the country than--

We'll jump into the waggon, And we'll all take a ride!

Though in winter, when the horses' shoes have to be roughed for the frost, or, worse, when the wheels sink deep into the spongy turf, and rain and sleet and snow make the decks slippery, it is not quite so jolly. Yet even then, so strong is the love of motion, a run with the waggon is preferred to stationary work.

The captain, when bound on a voyage, generally slips his cable or weighs anchor with the rising sun. His crew are first-rate helmsmen; and to see them sweep into the rickyard through the narrow gateway, with a heavy deck cargo piled to the skies, all sail set, a stiff breeze, and the timbers creaking, is a glorious sight! Not a sc.r.a.pe against the jetty, though 'touch and go' is the sign of a good pilot. His greatest trouble is when his cargo shifts out of sight of land: sometimes the vessel turns on her beam-ends with a too ponderous and ill-built load of straw, and then the wreck lies right in the fairway of all the ships coming up the channel. To load a waggon successfully is indeed a work of art: on the hills where the waggons have to run 'sidelong' to pick up the crops, one side higher than the other, no one but an experienced hand can make the stuff stay on. Then there is often a tremendous b.u.mping and sc.r.a.ping of the keel on the rocks of the newly-mended roads, and the nasty chopping seas of the deep ruts, besides the long regular Atlantic swells of the furrows and 'lands.' So that the cargo had need to be firmly placed in the hold.

Every now and then she goes into dock and gets a new streak of paint and a thorough overhauling. The running rigging of the harness has to be polished and kept in good condition, and the crew are rarely idle if the captain knows his business. You should never let your 'fo'castle' hands loll about; the proverb about the devil and the idle hands is notoriously true aboard ship, and in the stables.

How many a man's life has centred about the waggon! As a child he rides in it as a treat to the hay-field with his father; as a lad he walks beside the leader, and gets his first ideas of the great world when they visit the market town. As a man he takes command and pilots the ship for many a long, long year. When he marries, the waggon, lent for his own use, brings home his furniture. After a while his own children go for a ride in it, and play in it when stationary in the shed. In the painful ending the waggon carries the weak-kneed old man in pity to and from the old town for his weekly store of goods, or mayhap for his weekly dole of that staff of life his aged teeth can hardly grind. And many a plain coffin has the old waggon carried to the distant churchyard on the side of the hill. It is a cold spot--as life, too, was cold and hard; yet in the spring the daisies will come, and the thrushes will sing on the bough.