Lives of Labour
Like most country workers, shepherds and gamekeepers may go through a long life of labour without ever taking a holiday, possibly without thinking of one. We hear of eight-hour days for factory workers and discussions of an ideal work-day of six or even of four hours; but seldom a word is spoken for those country labourers, the length of whose toil is limited only by daylight—when it is not carried on as a matter of course into the night. Farm hands may work through all the days of the year; for where there is stock to be fed work is never-ceasing. Yet it is reasonable to suppose that holidays are as needful to the countryman as to the townsman, and that if the farm labourer or the shepherd were sent away to the sea every year for a fortnight's rest and change, he would work with a new energy that would more than compensate for the work lost. It would be something at least to break the deadly monotony of the daily round, even if the labourer had no ideas for profitably spending a holiday.
