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Updated: June 18, 2025
The soutar held out his hand to his disciple, and they finished their journey in silence. When they reached the farm-house, the small gathering was nearly complete. It was mostly of farm-labourers; but a few of the congregation worked in a quarry, where serpentine lay under the peat.
Some more of the old dame's recollections will be given in the next chapter, showing what the condition of the people was in this district about the year 1830, when the poor farm-labourers were driven by hunger and misery to revolt against their masters the farmers who were everywhere breaking up the downs with the plough to sow more and still more corn, who were growing very fat and paying higher and higher rents to their fat landlords, while the wretched men that drove the plough had hardly enough to satisfy their hunger.
'We will settle the matter at my house to-night. 'The sooner the better. 'Well, since it is so, Hamer added after a while, 'I will give you seventy-five roubles, and you shan't be left to die here. You and your wife can come to the school; you can spend the winter with us and I will give you the same pay as my own farm-labourers. Slimak winced at the word 'farm-labourer', but he said nothing.
His broad-brimmed clerical hat alone distinguished him from the farm-labourers in his parish; but when at work upon the church patching its shingle roof, or pouring mortar into its gaping wounds he discarded this for a maroon-coloured cap, not unlike a biretta, which offered less surface to the high winds.
She spoke very faintly, and was red in the face up to the time of our departure. John stood like a soldier. We drove away from a cheering crowd of cricketers and farm-labourers, as if discharged from a great gun. 'A royal salvo! said my father, and asked me earnestly whether I had forgotten to reward and take a particular farewell of any one of my friends.
Already he could turn almost without a sigh from the School-gates, from which had just scampered off East and three or four others of his own particular set, bound for some jolly lark not quite according to law, and involving probably a row with louts, keepers, or farm-labourers, the skipping dinner or calling-over, some of Phoebe Jennings's beer, and a very possible flogging at the end of all as a relish.
In the hottest weather, farm-labourers work all day in the open air, and feel no more inconvenience than reapers do in England. This is owing to the dryness and elasticity of the atmosphere.
Their position is apparently one of absolute dependence either upon the farmers or the landlords, there being no other local market for their labour, which is their only stock-in-trade. As one of them said to me to-day, "The farmers will work a man just as long as they can't help it, and then they throw him away." I asked if there were no regular farm-labourers hired at fixed rates by the year?
Are you ashamed to wear a present I gave you, while you expect me to wear yours? You're a coward! And you imagine yourself to be a man!" Henceforth the poor lawyer had no peace. Wherever he went, he met grinning faces, and farm-labourers and maid-servants from the safe retreat of sheltered nooks, shouted "the bull! the bull!" whenever he went past.
The chief's leg's pretty nearly right again, and he was saying at mess only yesterday that it was a most unnatural state of affairs for British officers to be forced by a set of low-bred Dutch Boers, no better than farm-labourers, to eat their beef without either mustard, horse-radish, or salt." "Horrible state of destitution," I said quietly. "None of your sneers, Farmer Val," he cried.
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