And as for fruit, he had more than he could eat of it; so that it could not fail, things going on in this way, that Hans should prosper; being besides thoroughly economical. If he spent as much as a batz on the day he went to the town, it was the end of the world.[19] In the morning, his mother took care he had a good breakfast, after which he took also something in his pocket, without counting that sometimes here, and sometimes there, one gave him a morsel in the kitchens where he was well known; and finally he didn’t imagine that he ought always to have something to eat, the moment he had a mind to it.

I am very sorry, but find there’s no chance of my getting the romantic part of my story rightly into this letter; so I must even leave it till August, for my sketch of Scott’s early life is promised for July, and I must keep my word to time more accurately than hitherto, else, as the letters increase in number, it is too probable I may forget what I promised in them; not that I lose sight even for a moment of my main purpose; but the contents of the letters being absolutely as the Third Fors may order, she orders me here and there so fast sometimes that I can’t hold the pace. This unlucky index, for example! It is easy enough to make an index, as it is to make a broom of odds and ends, as rough as oat straw; but to make an index tied up tight, and that will sweep well into corners, isn’t so easy. Ill-tied or well, it shall positively be sent with the July number (if I keep my health), and will be only six months late then; so that it will have been finished in about a fourth of the time a lawyer would have taken to provide any document for which there was a pressing necessity.

In the meantime, compare the picture of country life in Switzerland, already beginning to show itself in outline in our story of the broom-maker, with this following account of the changes produced by recent trade in the country life of the island of Jersey. It is given me by the correspondent who directed me to Professor Kirk’s book; (see the notes in last letter,) and is in every point of view of the highest value. Compare especially the operations of the great universal law of supply and demand in the article of fruit, as they affect the broom-boy, and my correspondent; and consider for yourselves, how far that beautiful law may affect, in time to come, not your pippins only, but also your cheese; and even at last your bread.

I give this letter large print; it is quite as important as anything I have myself to say. The italics are mine.

Mont à l’Abbe, Jersey, April 17, 1873.

Dear Master,—The lesson I have gathered here in Jersey as to the practical working of bodies of small land-owners, is that they have three arch-enemies to their life and well-being. First, the covetousness that, for the sake of money-increase, permits and seeks that great cities should drain the island of its life-blood—their best men and their best food or means of food; secondly, love of strong drink and tobacco; and thirdly, (for these two last are closely connected,) want of true recreation.

The island is cut up into small properties or holdings, a very much larger proportion of these being occupied and cultivated by the owners themselves than is the case in England. Consequently, as I think, the poor do not suffer as much as in England. Still the times have altered greatly for the worse within the memory of every middle-aged resident, and the change has been wrought chiefly by the regular and frequent communication with London and Paris, but more especially the first, which in the matter of luxuries of the table, has a maw insatiable.[20] Thus the Jersey farmer finds that, by devoting his best labour and land to the raising of potatoes sufficiently early to obtain a fancy price for them, very large money-gains are sometimes obtained,—subject also to large risks; for spring frosts on the one hand, and being outstripped by more venturous farmers on the other, are the Jersey farmers’ Scylla and Charybdis.

Now for the results. Land, especially that with southern aspect, has increased marvellously in price. Wages have also risen. In many employments nearly doubled. Twenty years ago a carpenter obtained 1s. 8d. per day. Now he gets 3s.; and field labourers’ wages have risen nearly as much in proportion. But food and lodging have much more than doubled. Potatoes for ordinary consumption are now from 2s. 6d. to 3s. 6d. per cabot (40 lb.); here I put out of court the early potatoes, which bring, to those who are fortunate in the race, three times that price. Fifteen years ago the regular price for the same quantity was from 5d. to 8d. Butter is now 1s. 4d. per lb. Then it was 6d.; and milk of course has altered in the same proportion. Fruit, which formerly could be had in lavish, nay, almost fabulous abundance, is now dearer than in London. In fact I, who am essentially a frugivorous animal, have found myself unable to indulge in it, and it is only at very rare intervals to be found in any shape at my table. All work harder, and all fare worse; but the poor specially so. The well-to-do possess a secret solace denied to them. It is found in the ‘share market.’ I am told by one employed in a banking-house and ‘finance’ business here, that it is quite wonderful how fond the Jersey farmers are of Turkish bonds, Grecian and Spanish coupons. Shares in mines seem also to find favour here. My friend in the banking-house tells me that he was once induced to try his fortune in that way. To be cautious, he invested in four different mines. It was perhaps fortunate for him that he never received a penny of his money back from any one of the four.

Another mode by which the earnings of the saving and industrious Jerseyman find their way back to London or Paris is the uncalculated, but not unfrequent, advent of a spendthrift among the heirs of the family. I am told that the landlord of the house I live in is of this stamp, and that two years more of the same rate of expenditure at Paris that he now uses, will bring him to the end of his patrimony.

But what of the stimulants, and the want of recreation? I have coupled these together because I think that drinking is an attempt to find, by a short and easy way, the reward of a true recreation; to supply a coarse goad to the wits, so that there may be forced or fancied increase of play to the imagination, and to experience, with this, an agreeable physical sensation. I think men will usually drink to get the fascinating combination of the two. True recreation is the cure, and this is not adequately supplied here, either in kind or degree, by tea-meetings and the various religious ‘services,’ which are almost the only social recreations (no irreverence intended by thus classing them) in use among the country folk of Jersey.

But I had better keep to my facts. The deductions I can well leave to my master.

Here is a fact as to the working of the modern finance system here. There is exceedingly little gold coin in the island; in place thereof we use one-pound notes issued by the banks of the island. The principal bank issuing these, and also possessing by far the largest list of depositors, has just failed. Liabilities, as estimated by the accountants, not less than £332,000; assets calculated by the same authorities not exceeding £34,000. The whole island is thrown into the same sort of catastrophe as English merchants by the Overend-Gurney failure. Business in the town nearly at a stand-still, and failures of tradesmen taking place one after another, with a large reserve of the same in prospect. But as the country people are as hard at work as ever, and the panic among the islanders has hindered in nowise the shooting of the blades through the earth, and general bursting forth of buds on the trees, I begin to think the island may survive to find some other chasm for their accumulations. Unless indeed the champion slays the dragon first. [As far as one of the unlearned may have an opinion, I strongly object both to ‘Rough skin,’ and ‘Red skin,’ as name derivations. There have been useful words derived from two sources, and I shall hold that the Latin prefix to the Saxon kin establishes a sort of relationship with St. George.]

I am greatly flattered by my correspondent’s philological studies; but alas, his pretty result is untenable: no derivation can stand astride on two languages; also, neither he, nor any of my readers, must think of me as setting myself up either for a champion or a leader. If they will look back to the first letter of this book, they will find it is expressly written to quit myself of public responsibility in pursuing my private work. Its purpose is to state clearly what must be done by all of us, as we can, in our place; and to fulfil what duty I personally acknowledge to the State; also I have promised, if I live, to show some example of what I know to be necessary, if no more able person will show it first. That is a very different thing from pretending to leadership in a movement which must one day be as wide as the world. Nay, even my marching days may perhaps soon be over, and the best that I can make of myself be a faithful signpost. But what I am, or what I fail to be, is of no moment to the cause. The two facts which I have to teach, or sign, though alone, as it seems, at present, in the signature, that food can only be got out of the ground, and happiness only out of honesty, are not altogether dependent on any one’s championship, for recognition among mankind.

For the present, nevertheless, these two important pieces of information are never, so far as I am aware, presented in any scheme of education either to the infantine or adult mind. And, unluckily, no other information whatever, without acquaintance with these facts, can produce either bread and butter, or felicity. I take the following four questions, for instance, as sufficiently characteristic, out of the seventy-eight, proposed, on their Fifth subject of study, to the children of St. Matthias’ National School, Granby Street, Bethnal Green, (school fees, twopence or threepence a week,) by way of enabling them to pass their First of May pleasantly, in this blessed year 1873.

1. Explain the distinction between an identity and an equation, and give an easy example of each. Show that if a simple equation in x is satisfied by two different values of x, it is an identity.

2. In what time will a sum of money double itself if invested at 10 per cent. per annum, compound interest?

3. How many different permutations can be made of the letters in the word Chillianwallah? How many if arranged in a circle, instead of a straight line? And how many different combinations of them, two and two, can be made?

4. Show that if α and β be constant, and φ and λ variable, and if then , unless .

I am bound to state that I could not answer any one of these interrogations myself, and that my readers must therefore allow for the bias of envy in the expression of my belief that to have been able to answer the sort of questions which the First of May once used to propose to English children,—whether they knew a cowslip from an oxslip, and a blackthorn from a white,—would have been incomparably more to the purpose, both of getting their living, and liking it.