ENGLISH.
I spent a few weeks in England in 1881, and visited three agricultural regions in the east, the north, and the south. An article on the last is to appear in Harpers’ Magazine. The following is drawn principally from my visit to the east. Some account of my stay in the north and of a few days in a manufacturing county may appear hereafter.
My authority for the statements in the following article is almost entirely notes taken at the time, assisted in a small degree by recollections. But it cannot be assumed that this essay is without faults.
With regard to another country, I was advised to tell what I saw and how it impressed my mind, and not to endeavor to draw conclusions. But what a traveller sees and hears is greatly influenced by his own opinions. He goes to a foreign land, and if of different religious institutions from his own, he inquires on this point; of a different form of government, he asks political questions. He notices, also, differences in dress, food, and manner of living.
The first family with whom I boarded in Huntingdonshire was that of Mr. Jackson, a carpenter, who, besides working at his trade, rented a few acres. His wife, who was a farmer’s daughter, had a small dairy of three cows. Jackson appeared to have a splendid constitution. He was short and somewhat thick-set. He began his trade at eighteen, and was an apprentice five years and a journeyman three, when, having put by some money, he married at twenty-six. His wife was near thirty. One of them said that they had prospered with the help of the Lord.
Mrs. Jackson also had been able to save something wherewith to furnish a house. She learned a trade, and was also companion or lady’s-maid to sick ladies and those going to Brighton. One of them made her a wedding present of neat china.
Jackson and his wife have four children,—the eldest about six, or as she says, “Four little children, not one of them able to put on a shoe nor a stocking.” She attends to her dairy, boards the apprentice, and has no servant.
Their children are sweet and clean. Three of them go to the public school in the village. It is called the national school. Mrs. Jackson gave the eldest three pence to pay for their instruction for a week; which is at the rate of about twenty-four cents a quarter for each of them. The penny is a trifle over two cents, the shilling a little under a quarter of a dollar; but in turning sterling money into our own, it will avoid repetition to consider the English penny as two cents, and four shillings as a dollar.
The Jacksons’ house seemed a perfect palace compared to that of any working farmer that I saw in Ireland. Coming freshly from that country, I thought it must be the gem of the village, but I was mistaken. The busy activity of the Jacksons, who have a young family to keep, was more like what I have seen at home than what I saw in Ireland.