The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1875-10-21
AN UNHAPPY LIFE.
The English Fnrm Laborer's Daughter. and
the Manner In which she Livess and II
Treated.

The English Fnrm Laborer's Daughter. and
the Manner In which she I.ivess and IL
Treated.
At seven or eight years old the girls
labor begins. Before that she has been
set to mind the baby, or watch the pot,
and to scour about the hedges for sticks
for the fire. Now she has not only to
mind the baby, but to nurse it; she car
ries it about with her in her arms, and
really the infant looks almost as large as
herself, and its weight compels her to
lean backward. She is left at home all
day in charge of the baby, the younger
children and the cottage. Perhaps
little bread is left for them to eat, but
they get nothing more till the mother
returns about 4;30, when woe be to the
girl if the fire is not Lit, and the kettle
on. The girl has to fetch the water
often a hard and tedious task, for many
villages have a most imperfect supply,
and you may see the bitches by the road
side damned up to yield little dirty
water. She may have to walk half
mile to the brook, and then carry the
bucket home as best she may, and repeat
the operation till sufficient has been ac-
or worse still is q washerwoman by pro-
fession, this is her weary trudge all day.
OF course there are villages where water
is at hand, sometimes too much of it. l
know large village where the brook
runs beside the highway, and you have
to pass over "drock " or small bridge
to get to each of the cottages, but such
instances are rare. The girl has also to
walk into the adjacent town and bring
back the bread, particularly if her mother
happens to be receiving parish pay. A
little older-at ten or eleven OF twelve
still more skinny and bony now as rule,
she follows her mother to the fields, and
learns to pick up stones from the young
moving grass, and place them in heaps
to be carted away to mend drinking
places for cattle. She learns to beat
clots and spread them with a small
prong she works in the bayfield, and
CLEANS at the corn-harvest. Cleaning
poetical gleanipg-is the most unpleas-
ant and uncomfortable of labor, tedious,
slow, backaching work /; picking up ear
by ear the dropped wheat, searching
among the prickly stubble. Nothwith-
standing all her labor, and the hardship
she has to endlre-coarse fare and
churlish treatment at the hands of those
who should love her most-the little
agricultural girl still retains some OF
that natural inclination toward the
pretty and romantic inherent in the sex.
In the spring she makes daisy chains
and winds them round the baby's neck
or with the stalks of the dandelion makes
chain several feet in length. She
plucks great punches of the beautiful
bluebell, and of the purple orchis of the
meadow; gathers heaps of the cowslip,
and after playing with them a little
while, they are left to wither in the dust
by the roadside, while she is sent two OIL
three miles with her fathers dinner.
She chants snatches of rural songs, and
sometimes three or four together, join.
ing hands, dance slowly round and
round. singing slowly rude rhymes de-
scribing marriage. She has no toys
not one in twenty such girls ever have 6
doll CT, if they do, it is but some stick
dressed in rag. Poor things ! they
need no artificial dolls : so soon as evel
they can lift it they are trusted with the
real baby. Her parents probably dc
not mean to be unkind, and Use makes
this treatment bearable, but to an out
slider it seems unnecessarily rough, anG
even brutal. Her mother shouts at hel
in shrill treble perpetually her father
enforces his orders with a harsh oatl
and slap.-Fraser's Magazine.