Public-houses are numerous in these villages. They are mostly simple ale-houses, with such titles as the Three Horse-Shoes, the Rose and Crown, the Three Jolly Butchers. I counted at least eleven in a village of less than seven hundred people.
The wages of a farm-laborer here are under two dollars and seventy-five cents a week, and he boards himself. The cottagers on the farm where I boarded got their houses free and a rood of ground in which to plant potatoes. While at Haddenham I visited a friend in a near village, who took me to ride upon the fens, and her husband particularly desired her to show me some cottages, or laborers’ houses, that he had built. The point that I was especially to observe was the rooms provided for sleeping, there being a bedroom down-stairs and two or more above. On this subject I spoke to Mrs. Benton, the farmer’s wife, who said that the laborers here have generally a kitchen, I believe a better room, and two chambers. She admitted that the boys and girls have to sleep in the same room.
Mrs. Benton said that if the laborer’s wife, who has a number of young children, is kind and considerate of her husband, she will try to provide him a bit of meat daily, but it will be but a little bit; and the children will not taste meat oftener than once a week.
As I have before intimated, hours of labor are easy,—farm hands getting half an hour for lunch, and an hour for dinner. (But I cannot say whether this lunch-time is allowed at other than harvest.) In hay and harvest they work overtime, and are paid for overwork.
Fruit-picking was going on while I was at Haddenham. In fruit-gathering times, when the wives and boys get out a little, meat may be more plentiful in laborers’ houses. There is a great press at fruit-gathering. The people go out in gangs about six or seven o’clock, and return about seven. The wages are about thirty-two cents a day. A market for the fruit is furnished by the manufacturing regions, where farm produce is more scarce.
At Haddenham I heard that after harvest they have a thanksgiving festival. There is a village flower-show in the rectory grounds and a public tea. They deck the church with wheat, barley, oats, beans, grapes, apples, and pears, and have a service in the evening. A collection is taken up for the county hospital, which is supported almost entirely by voluntary subscription.
To return once more to education. It is now compulsory, as I have said; but a friend estimated that of the people over thirty, a large proportion could not read and write.
PECULIARITIES OF SPEECH.
To us that one by which the English drop the letter h where it belongs, and put it on where it does not, is one of the most striking; as, Harable land is ’eavier taxed; my huncle is not very ’ealthy.
Two ways of speaking that are called Yankee with us are found here; one is the sharp ou.