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Similarly on this same head, the Uncommercial underwent discomfiture from a Wiltshire labourer: a simple, fresh-coloured farm-labourer, of eight-and-thirty, who at one time stood beside him looking on at new arrivals, and with whom he held this dialogue: UNCOMMERCIAL. Would you mind my asking you what part of the country you come from? WILTSHIRE. Not a bit. Theer!

But he knew very little of Clare, and looked upon him as any ordinary earl would look upon an ordinary farm-labourer.

He advised John Clare to seek work immediately, either as a farm-labourer or lime-burner, and to devote only his spare time to the writing of verses. As to the verses already written, he promised to lay them before other judges, and to publish them, at any rate, more or less corrected and altered.

What may be the place of the clergyman in an English parish, and what associations of sympathy and counsel the rectory may have for the English farm-labourer, it is not permitted to a northern man to know, but it is one good thing at least in our poor land that the manse is another word for guidance and good cheer, so that Jean advises Jock in their poor little perplexity about a new place to "slip doon an' see the Doctor," and Jock, although appearing to refuse, does "gie a cry at the manse," and comes home to the gude-wife mightily comforted.

Was the writer aware of the money-value of seven cows, the capital thereby represented, and could she point to any farm-labourer in England, however well off in the matter of cupboards and clothes-pegs, possessed of seven cows, their stalls and pasture-ground in other words, a capitalist to the extent of several hundred pounds?

On Sundays the country folk for miles round would walk over to Mattishall Burgh to see old Henry Hill's bees, and hear him expound their lore. It was perforce Sunday, there was no other day for the Norfolk farm-labourer of that generation, who seemed always to live on the verge of starvation.

He is stronger now, but no less delicate; he loves not Nature less, but the world more. He has learned to love his fellow-men. Knut Pedersen, vagabond, wanders about the country with his tramp-companions, Grindhusen, the painter who can ditch and delve at a pinch, or Falkenberg, farm-labourer in harvest-time, and piano-tuner where pianos are.

And when the door swung back which led into the little thatched hut, and he saw his mother and father sitting by the fire, he rushed into their arms, and fairly frightened them with the outburst of his affection. There now remained nothing for John Clare but to fall back upon his old way of living, and to seek a precarious existence as farm-labourer.

Gladstone fell in for the hottest measure of abuse. When some resolution was about to be put a man seated in the body of the hall got up and asked if he might say a few words. He was a tall, thick-set person, and his dress was so plain that most of us took him for a farmer, if not a farm-labourer.

Thus, in Germany, a twig is cut by the farm-labourer, in spring, and on the first thunderstorm a cross is made with it over every heap of grain, whereby, it is supposed, the corn will remain good for many years. Occasionally, too, one may see hazel twigs placed in the window frames during a heavy shower, and the Tyroleans regard it as an excellent lightning conductor.