A good deal of woman-labour is employed in mines. They are the bal-maidens, and work on the dressing-floors. Work agrees with them, and Professor Sandow wouldn't find much room for developing the muscles of a bal-maiden. We saw some at work from the train, and heard them singing. We saw others nearer, and they were singing also. It's just part of the business to sing, and more hymns are sung over Cornish tin than over all the rest of the minerals raised in the world. One girl starts singing, and the rest join in; and very sweet singing it is when heard in the open. The surface men catch on, and there's just sweet harmony, whilst the stamps are dancing, and the great bob is going up and down, pumping out water. Nothing stops when the orchestra is in full swing. The men generally sing, too, when going and coming, and they like a hymn with a good, rousing march tune. After the night and early morning shifts, the hills and valleys are tuneful, and people hearing know what hour it is, as the shifts are regular. There are four shifts in the twenty-four hours. A shift is called a "coor."
[Chapter XXIV]
The man in soft felt hat, and brown canvas bag slung across his side, with wicked-looking little hammer-head peeping out, is a common object. Specimens enough have been taken out of the county to metal a turnpike road, and yet the scientific stone-man comes and tumbles over the refuse-heaps once again, and chips little bits on his own account, and carries them off. To find sermons in stones is his reward, and there are sermons enough, in all conscience, in a county which is mostly stone, or something harder. When a man of science in a soft felt hat is missing, the first idea is that he's fallen down an old mine shaft, and that his stone treasures have taken him safely to the bottom, a hundred fathoms or so under water. It is well to beware of one's steps, and not to take short cuts in the dark across moors and downs which are honeycombed.