Bode old England no good.
Last year showed that 'summer's flood' was as destructive as in the olden time. But then there would have been a rise of prices, according to the saying,—
When the vale shall feed the hill,
Every man shall eat his fill.
But when the hill shall feed the vale,
The penny loaf shall be but small.
Now, last season, so far as our home harvests were concerned, the 'hill' did feed the 'vale,' but the penny loaves were as large and as plentiful as usual, owing to foreign grain. In those old days, seventy or eighty years since, the whole population of the kingdom watched the weather with anxiety; and it was then that the signs and tokens of birds and plants and the set of the wind at particular times were regarded as veritable oracles to be inquired into not without fear and trembling.
Hilary heard all about it when he was a lad from old Jonathan, who had a corn-farm up on the hills, and where he used to go to plough. Hilary never stated the exact degree, but there was some relationship between them—two branches, I fancy, of the same family. He seemed to have a very bitter memory of the old man (now dead), who had been a hard master to him in his youth; besides which, some family jar had arisen over money matters; still, he was fond of quoting Jonathan in reference to wheat and the heyday of corn-farming. Jonathan remembered when a load of wheat fetched 55l.—a load being five quarters or ten sacks—or 11l. a quarter. The present average of wheat was about 2l. 6s. per quarter. At the same time bread was at 3s. a gallon; it is now about 1s. 6d. The wages of an agricultural labourer were 6s. a week. It was gambling, positive gambling, in the staff of life.
No farmer was held in any esteem if he did not keep his wheat ricks till harvest came again before threshing them out: men grew rich suddenly and knew not what to do with their money. Farmers who had been brought up 'hard,' living like labourers, working like labourers, and with little more amusement than labourers, all at once found their pockets full of coin. The wheat they had been selling at 5l. a load ran up to 50l. With their purses thus crammed full, what were they to do? There was nothing but drink, and they did drink.
In those days the farmer in his isolated homestead was more cut off from the world than the settler at the present time in the backwoods or on the prairies. The telegraph wires span the continent of America, and are carried across the dry deserts of Australia. Wherever the settler may be, he is never very far from the wires or the railway; the railway meets the ocean steamer; and we can form no conception of the utter lack of communication in the old world of our immediate forefathers. The farmer, being away from the main road and the track of the mail coaches, knew no one but his neighbours, saw no one, and heard but little. Amusements there were none, other than could be had at the alehouse or by riding into the market town to the inn there. So that when this great flush of prosperity came upon them, old Jonathan and his friends had nothing to do but drink.