Chapter III: Part 3

86. As to the act of making bread, it would be shocking indeed if that had to be taught by the means of books. Every woman, high or low, ought to know how to make bread. If she do not, she is unworthy of trust and confidence; and, indeed, a mere burden upon the community. Yet, it is but too true, that many women, even amongst those who have to get their living by their labour, know nothing of the making of bread; and seem to understand little more about it than the part which belongs to its consumption. A Frenchman, a Mr. CUSAR, who had been born in the West Indies, told me, that till he came to Long Island, he never knew _how the flour came_: that he was surprised when he learnt that it was squeezed out of little grains that grew at the tops of straw; for that he had always had an idea that it was got out of some large substances, like the yams that grow in tropical climates. He was a very sincere and good man, and I am sure he told me truth. And this may be the more readily believed, when we see so many women in England, who seem to know no more of the constituent parts of a loaf than they know of those of the moon. Servant women in abundance appear to think that loaves are made by the baker, as knights are made by the king; things of their pure creation, a creation, too, in which no one else can participate. Now, is not this an enormous evil? And whence does it come? Servant women are the children of the labouring classes; and they would all know how to make bread, and know well how to make it too, if they had been fed on bread of their mother's and their own making.

87. How serious a matter, then, is this, even in this point of view! A servant that cannot make bread is not entitled to the same wages as one that can. If she can neither bake nor brew; if she be ignorant of the nature of flour, yeast, malt, and hops, what is she good for? If she understand these matters well; if she be able to supply her employer with bread and with beer, she is really _valuable_; she is entitled to good wages, and to consideration and respect into the bargain; but if she be wholly deficient in these particulars, and can merely dawdle about with a bucket and a broom, she can be of very little consequence; to lose her, is merely to lose a consumer of food, and she can expect very little indeed in the way of desire to make her life easy and pleasant. Why should any one have such desire? She is not a child of the family. She is not a relation. Any one as well as she can take in a loaf from the baker, or a barrel of beer from the brewer. She has nothing whereby to bind her employer to her. To sweep a room any thing is capable of that has got two hands. In short, she has no useful skill, no useful ability; she is an ordinary drudge, and she is treated accordingly.

88. But, if such be her state in the house of an employer, what is her state in the house of a _husband_? The lover is blind; but the husband has eyes to see with. He soon discovers that there is something wanted besides dimples and cherry cheeks; and I would have fathers seriously reflect, and to be well assured, that the way to make their daughters to be long admired, beloved and respected by their husbands, is to make them skilful, able and active in the most necessary concerns of a family. Eating and drinking come three times every day; the preparations for these, and all the ministry necessary to them, belong to the wife; and I hold it to be impossible, that at the end of two years, a really ignorant, sluttish wife should possess any thing worthy of the name of love from her husband. This, therefore, is a matter of far greater moment to the father of a family, than, whether the Parson of the parish, or the Methodist Priest, be the most "_Evangelical_" of the two; for it is here a question of the daughter's happiness or misery for life. And I have no hesitation to say, that if I were a labouring man, I should prefer teaching my daughters to bake, brew, milk, make butter and cheese, to teaching them to read the Bible till they had got every word of it by heart; and I should think, too, nay I should know, that I was in the former case doing my duty towards God as well as towards my children.

89. When we see a family of dirty, ragged little creatures, let us inquire into the cause; and ninety-nine times out of every hundred we shall find that the parents themselves have been brought up in the same way. But a consideration which ought of itself to be sufficient, is the contempt in which a husband will naturally hold a wife that is ignorant of the matters necessary to the conducting of a family. A woman who understands all the things above mentioned, is really a skilful person; a person worthy of respect, and that will be treated with respect too, by all but brutish employers or brutish husbands; and such, though sometimes, are not very frequently found. Besides, if natural justice and our own interest had not the weight which they have, such valuable persons will be treated with respect. They know their own worth; and, accordingly, they are more careful of their character, more careful not to lessen by misconduct the value which they possess from their skill and ability.

90. Thus, then, the interest of the labourer; his health; the health of his family; the peace and happiness of his home; the prospects of his children through life; their skill, their ability, their habits of cleanliness, and even their moral deportment; all combine to press upon him the adoption and the constant practice of this branch of domestic economy. "Can she _bake_?" is the question that I always put. If she can, she is _worth a pound or two a year more_. Is that nothing? Is it nothing for a labouring man to make his four or five daughters worth eight or ten pounds a year more; and that too while he is by the same means providing the more plentifully for himself and the rest of his family? The reasons on the side of the thing that I contend for are endless; but if this one motive be not sufficient, I am sure, all that I have said, and all that I could say, must be wholly unavailing.

91. Before, however, I dismiss this subject, let me say a word or two to those persons who do not come under the denomination of labourers. In London, or in any very large town where the space is so confined, and where the proper fuel is not handily to be come at and stored for use, to bake your own bread may be attended with too much difficulty; but in all other situations there appears to me to be hardly any excuse for not baking bread at home. If the family consist of twelve or fourteen persons, the money actually saved in this way (even at present prices) would be little short of from twenty to thirty pounds a year. At the utmost here is only the time of one woman occupied one day in the week. Now mind, here are twenty-five pounds to be employed in some way different from that of giving it to the baker. If you add five of these pounds to a woman's wages, is not that full as well employed as giving it in wages to the baker's men? Is it not better employed for you? and is it not better employed for the community? It is very certain, that if the practice were as prevalent as I could wish, there would be a large deduction from the regular baking population; but would there be any harm if less alum were imported into England, and if some of those youths were left at the plough, who are now bound in apprenticeships to learn the art and mystery of doing that which every girl in the kingdom ought to be taught to do by her mother? It ought to be a maxim with every master and every mistress, never to employ another to do that which can be done as well by their own servants. The more of their money that is retained in the hands of their own people, the better it is for them altogether. Besides, a man of a right mind must be pleased with the reflection, that there is a great mass of skill and ability under his own roof. He feels stronger and more independent on this account, all pecuniary advantage out of the question. It is impossible to conceive any thing more contemptible than a crowd of men and women living together in a house, and constantly looking out of it for people to bring them food and drink, and to fetch their garments to and fro. Such a crowd resemble a nest of unfledged birds, absolutely dependent for their very existence on the activity and success of the old ones.

92. Yet, on men go, from year to year, in this state of wretched dependence, even when they have all the means of living within themselves, which is certainly the happiest state of life that any one can enjoy. It may be asked, Where is the mill to be found? where is the wheat to be got? The answer is, Where is there not a mill? where is there not a market? They are every where, and the difficulty is to discover what can be the particular attractions contained in that long and luminous manuscript, a baker's half-yearly bill.

93. With regard to the mill, in speaking of families of any considerable number of persons, the mill has, with me, been more than once a subject of observation in print. I for a good while experienced the great inconvenience and expense of sending my wheat and other grain to be ground at a mill. This expense, in case of a considerable family, living at only a mile from a mill, is something; but the inconveniency and uncertainty are great. In my "Year's Residence in America," from Paragraphs 1031 and onwards, I give an account of a horse-mill which I had in my farm yard; and I showed, I think very clearly, that corn could be ground cheaper in this way than by wind or water, and that it would answer well to grind for sale in this way as well as for home use. Since my return to England I have seen a mill, erected in consequence of what the owner had read in my book. This mill belongs to a small farmer, who, when he cannot work on his land with his horses, or in the season when he has little for them to do, grinds wheat, sells the flour; and he takes in grists to grind, as other millers do. This mill goes with three small horses; but what I would recommend to gentlemen with considerable families, or to farmers, is a mill such as I myself have at present.

94. With this mill, turned by a man and a stout boy, I can grind six bushels of wheat in a day and dress the flour. The grinding of six bushels of wheat at ninepence a bushel comes to four and sixpence, which pays the man and the boy, supposing them (which is not and seldom can be the case) to be hired for the express purpose out of the street. With the same mill you grind meat for your pigs; and of this you will get eight or ten bushels ground in a day. You have no trouble about sending to the mill; you are sure to have your _own wheat_; for strange as it may seem, I used sometimes to find that I sent white Essex wheat to the mill, and that it brought me flour from very coarse red wheat. There is no accounting for this, except by supposing that wind and water power has something in it to change the very nature of the grain; as, when I came to grind by horses, such as the wheat went into the hopper, so the flour came out into the bin.

95. But mine now is only on the petty scale of providing for a dozen of persons and a small lot of pigs. For a farm-house, or a gentleman's house in the country, where there would be _room_ to have a walk for a horse, you might take the labour from the men, clap any little horse, pony, or even ass to the wheel; and he would grind you off eight or ten bushels of wheat in a day, and both he and you would have the thanks of your men into the bargain.

96. The cost of this mill is twenty pounds. The dresser is four more; the horse-path and wheel might, possibly, be four or five more; and, I am very certain, that to any farmer living at a mile from a mill, (and that is less than the average distance perhaps;) having twelve persons in family, having forty pigs to feed, and twenty hogs to fatten, the savings of such a mill would pay the whole expenses of it the very first year. Such a farmer cannot send less than _fifty times_ a year to the mill. Think of that, in the first place! The elements are not always propitious: sometimes the water fails, and sometimes the wind. Many a farmer's wife has been tempted to vent her spleen on both. At best, there must be horse and man, or boy, and, perhaps, cart, to go to the mill; and that, too, observe, in all weathers, and in the harvest as well as at other times of the year. The case is one of imperious necessity: neither floods nor droughts, nor storms nor calms, will allay the cravings of the kitchen, nor quiet the clamorous uproar of the stye. Go, somebody must, to some place or other, and back they must come with flour and with meal. One summer many persons came down the country more than fifty miles to a mill that I knew in Pennsylvania; and I have known farmers in England carry their grists more than fifteen miles to be ground. It is surprising, that, under these circumstances, hand-mills and horse-mills should not, long ago, have become of more general use; especially when one considers that the labour, in this case, would cost the farmer next to nothing. To grind would be the work of a wet day. There is no farmer who does not at least fifty days in every year exclaim, when he gets up in the morning, "What shall I set _them_ at to-day?" If he had a mill, he would make them pull off their shoes, sweep all out clean, winnow up some corn, if he had it not already done, and grind and dress, and have every thing in order. No scolding within doors about the grist; no squeaking in the stye; no boy sent off in the rain to the mill.

97. But there is one advantage which I have not yet mentioned; and which is the greatest of all; namely, that you would have the power of supplying your married labourers; your blacksmith's men sometimes; your wheelwright's men at other times; and, indeed, the greater part of the persons that you employed, with good flour, instead of their going to purchase their flour, after it had passed through the hands of a Corn Merchant, a Miller, a Flour Merchant, and a Huckster, every one of whom does and must have a profit out of the flour, arising from wheat grown upon, and sent away from, your very farm! I used to let all my people have flour at the same price that they would otherwise have been compelled to give for worse flour. _Every Farmer_ will understand me when I say, that he ought to pay for nothing in _money_, which he can pay for in any thing but money. His maxim is to keep the money that he takes as long as he can. Now here is a most effectual way of putting that maxim in practice to a very great extent. Farmers know well that it is the Saturday night which empties their pockets; and here is the means of cutting off a good half of the Saturday night. The men have better flour for the same money, and still the farmer keeps at home those profits which would go to the maintaining of the dealers in wheat and in flour.

98. The maker of my little mill is Mr. HILL, of Oxford-street. The expense is what I have stated it to be. I, with my small establishment, find the thing convenient and advantageous; what then must it be to a gentleman in the country who has room and horses, and a considerable family to provide for? The dresser is so contrived as to give you at once, meal, of four degrees of fineness; so that, for certain purposes, you may take the very finest; and, indeed, you may have your flour, and your bread of course, of what degree of fineness you please. But there is also a _steel mill_, much less _expensive_, requiring _less labour_, and yet quite sufficient for a _family_. Mills of this sort, very good, and at a reasonable price, are to be had of Mr. PARKES, in _Fenchurch-street_, London. These are very complete things of their kind. Mr. PARKES has, also, excellent Malt-Mills.

99. In concluding this part of my Treatise, I cannot help expressing my hope of being instrumental in inducing a part of the labourers, at any rate, to bake their own bread; and, above all things, to abandon the use of "Ireland's _lazy_ root." Nevertheless, so extensive is the erroneous opinion relative to this villanous root, that I really began to despair of checking its cultivation and use, till I saw the declaration which Mr. WAKEFIELD had the good sense and the spirit to make before the "AGRICULTURAL COMMITTEE." Be it observed, too, that Mr. WAKEFIELD had himself made a survey of the state of Ireland. What he saw there did not encourage him, doubtless, to be an advocate for the growing of this root of wretchedness. It is an undeniable fact, that, in the proportion that this root is in use, as a _substitute for bread_, the people are wretched; the reasons for which I have explained and enforced a hundred times over. Mr. WILLIAM HANNING told the Committee that the labourers in his part of Somersetshire were "almost wholly supplied with potatoes, _breakfast_ and _dinner_, brought them _in the fields_, and nothing but potatoes; and that they used, in better times, to get a certain portion of bacon and cheese, which, on account of their "poverty, they do not eat now." It is impossible that men can be _contented_ in such a state of things: it is unjust to desire them to be contented: it is a state of misery and degradation to which no part of any community can have any show of right to reduce another part: men so degraded have no protection; and it is a disgrace to form part of a community to which they belong. This degradation has been occasioned by a silent change in the value of the money of the country. This has purloined the wages of the labourer; it has reduced him by degrees to housel with the spider and the bat, and to feed with the pig. It has changed the habits, and, in a great measure, the character of the people. The sins of this system are enormous and undescribable; but, thank God! they seem to be approaching to their end! Money is resuming its value, labour is recovering its price: let us hope that the wretched potatoe is disappearing, and that we shall, once more, see the knife in the labourer's hand and the loaf upon his board.

[This was written in 1821. _Now_ (1823) we have had the experience of 1822, when, for the first time, the world saw a considerable part of a people, plunged into all the horrors of _famine_, at a moment when the government of that nation declared _food to be abundant_! Yes, the year 1822 saw Ireland in this state; saw the people of whole parishes receiving the _extreme unction_ preparatory to yielding up their breath for want of food; and this while large exports of meat and flour were taking place in that country! But horrible as this was, disgraceful as it was to the name of Ireland, it was attended with this good effect: it brought out, from many members of Parliament (in their places,) and from the public in general, the acknowledgment, that the _misery_ and _degradation_ of the Irish were chiefly owing to the _use of the potatoe as the almost sole food of the people_.]

100. In my next number I shall treat of the _keeping of cows_. I have said that I will teach the cottager how to keep a cow all the year round upon the produce of a quarter of an acre, or, in other words, _forty rods_, of land; and, in my next, I will make good my promise.

No. IV

MAKING BREAD--(CONTINUED.)

101. In the last number, at Paragraph 86, I observed that I hoped it was unnecessary for me to give any directions as to the mere _act_ of making bread. But several correspondents inform me that, without these directions, a conviction of the utility of baking bread at home is of _no use to them_. Therefore, I shall here give those directions, receiving my instructions here from one, who, I thank God, does know how to perform this act.

102. Suppose the quantity be a bushel of flour. Put this flour into a _trough_ that people have for the purpose, or it may be in a clean smooth tub of any shape, if not too deep, and if sufficiently large. Make a pretty deep hole in the middle of this heap of flour. Take (for a bushel) a pint of good fresh yeast, mix it and stir it well up in a pint of _soft_ water milk-warm. Pour this into the hole in the heap of flour. Then take a spoon and work it round the outside of this body of moisture so as to bring into that body, by degrees, flour enough to make it form a _thin batter_, which you must stir about well for a minute or two. Then take a handful of flour and scatter it thinly over the head of this batter, so as to _hide_ it. Then cover the whole over with a cloth to keep it _warm_; and this covering, as well as the situation of the trough, as to distance from the fire, must depend on the nature of the place and state of the weather as to heat and cold. When you perceive that the batter has risen enough to make _cracks_ in the flour that you covered it over with, you begin to form the whole mass into _dough_, thus: you begin round the hole containing the batter, working the flour into the batter, and pouring in, as it is wanted to make the flour mix with the batter, soft water milk-warm, or milk, as hereafter to be mentioned. Before you begin this, you scatter the _salt_ over the heap at the rate of _half a pound_ to a bushel of flour. When you have got the whole _sufficiently moist_, you _knead it well_. This is a grand part of the business; for, unless the dough be _well worked_, there will be _little round lumps of flour in the loaves_; and, besides, the original batter, which is to give fermentation to the whole, will not be duly mixed. The dough must, therefore, be well worked. The _fists_ must go heartily into it. It must be rolled over; pressed out; folded up and pressed out again, until it be completely mixed, and formed into a _stiff_ and _tough dough_. This is _labour_, mind. I have never quite liked baker's bread since I saw a great heavy fellow, in a bakehouse in France, kneading bread with his _naked feet_! His feet looked very _white_, to be sure: whether they were of that colour _before he got into the trough_ I could not tell. God forbid, that I should suspect that this is ever done _in England_! It is _labour_; but, what is _exercise_ other than labour? Let a young woman bake a bushel once a week, and she will do very well without phials and gallipots.

103. Thus, then, the dough is made. And, when made, it is to be formed into a lump in the middle of the trough, and, with a little dry flour thinly scattered over it, covered over again to be kept warm and to ferment; and in this state, if all be done rightly, it will not have to remain more than about 15 or 20 minutes.

104. In the mean while _the oven is to be heated_; and this is much more than half the art of the operation. When an oven is properly heated, can be known only by _actual observation_. Women who understand the matter, know when the heat is right the moment they put their faces within a yard of the oven-mouth; and once or twice observing is enough for any person of common capacity. But this much may be said in the way of _rule_: that the fuel (I am supposing a brick oven) should be _dry_ (not _rotten_) wood, and not mere _brush-wood_, but rather _fagot-sticks_. If larger wood, it ought to be split up into sticks not more than two, or two and a half inches through. Bush-wood that is _strong_, not green and not too old, if it be hard in its nature and has some _sticks_ in it, may do. The _woody_ parts of furze, or ling, will heat an oven very well. But the thing is, to have a _lively_ and yet _somewhat strong_ fire; so that the oven may be heated in about 15 minutes, and retain its heat sufficiently long.

105. The oven should be hot by the time that the dough, as mentioned in Paragraph 103, has remained in the lump about 20 minutes. When both are ready, take out the fire, and wipe the oven out clean, and, at nearly about the same moment, take the dough out upon the lid of the baking trough, or some proper place, cut it up into pieces, and make it up into loaves, kneading it again into these separate parcels; and, as you go on, shaking a little flour over your board, to prevent the dough from adhering to it. The loaves should be put into the oven as _quickly_ as possible after they are formed; when in, the oven-lid, or door, should be fastened up _very closely_; and, if all be properly managed, loaves of about the size of quartern loaves will be sufficiently baked in about _two hours_. But they usually take down the _lid_, and _look_ at the bread, in order to see how it is going on.

106. And what is there worthy of the name of _plague_, or _trouble_, in all this? Here is no dirt, no filth, no rubbish, no _litter_, no _slop_. And, pray, what can be pleasanter to _behold_? Talk, indeed, of your pantomimes and gaudy shows; your processions and installations and coronations! Give me, for a beautiful sight, a neat and smart woman, heating her oven and setting in her bread! And, if the bustle does make the sign of labour glisten on her brow, where is the man that would not kiss that off, rather than lick the plaster from the cheek of a duchess.

107. And what is the _result_? Why, good, wholesome food, sufficient for a considerable family for a week, prepared in three or four hours. To get this quantity of food, fit to be _eaten_, in the shape of potatoes, _how many fires_! what a washing, what a boiling, what a peeling, what a slopping, and what a messing! The cottage everlastingly in a litter; the woman's hands everlastingly wet and dirty; the children grimed up to the eyes with dust fixed on by potato-starch; and ragged as colts, the poor mother's time all being devoted to the everlasting boilings of the pot! Can any man, who knows any thing of the labourer's life, deny this? And will, then, any body, except the old shuffle-breeches band of the Quarterly Review, who have all their lives been moving from garret to garret, who have seldom seen the sun, and never the dew except in print; will any body except these men say, that the people ought to be taught to use potatoes as a _substitute for bread_?

BREWING BEER.

108. This matter has been fully treated of in the two last numbers. But several correspondents wishing to fall upon some means of rendering the practice beneficial to those who are _unable to purchase_ brewing utensils, have recommended the _lending_ of them, or letting out, round a neighbourhood. Another correspondent has, therefore, pointed out to me _an Act of Parliament_ which touches upon this subject; and, indeed, what of Excise Laws and Custom Laws and Combination Laws and Libel Laws, a human being in this country scarcely knows what he dares do or what he dares say. What father, for instance, would have imagined, that, having brewing utensils, which two men carry from house to house as easily as they can a basket, _he dared not lend them to his son, living in the next street, or at the next door_? Yet such really is the law; for, according to the Act 5th of the 22 and 23 of that honest and sincere gentleman Charles II., there is a penalty of 50_l._ for lending or letting brewing utensils. However, it has this limit; that the penalty is confined to _Cities_, _Corporate Towns_, and _Market Towns_, WHERE THERE IS A PUBLIC BREWHOUSE. So that, in the first place, you may let, or lend, in _any_ place where there is _no public brewhouse_; and in all towns not _corporate or market_, and in all villages, hamlets, and scattered places.

109. Another thing is, can a man who has brewed beer at his own house in the country, bring that beer into town to his own house, and for the use of his family there? This has been asked of me. I cannot give a positive answer without reading about _seven large volumes in quarto of taxing laws_. The best way would be to _try it_; and, if any penalty, pay it by _subscription_, if that would not come under the law of _conspiracy_! However, I _think_, there can be no danger here. So monstrous a thing as this can, surely, not exist. If there be such a law, it is daily violated; for nothing is more common than for country gentlemen, who have a dislike to die by poison, bringing their home-brewed beer to London.

110. Another correspondent recommends _parishes to make their own malt_. But, surely, the landlords mean to get rid of the _malt and salt tax_! Many dairies, I dare say, pay 50_l._ a year each in salt tax. How, then, are they to contend against Irish butter and Dutch butter and cheese? And as to the malt tax, it is a dreadful drain from the land. I have heard of labourers, living "in _unkent places_," making their _own malt_, even now! Nothing is so easy as to make your own malt, if you were permitted. You soak the barley about three days (according to the state of the weather.) and then you put it upon stones or bricks _and keep it turned_, till the root _shoots out_; and then to know when to _stop_, and to put it to dry, take up a corn (which you will find nearly transparent) and look through the skin of it. You will see the _spear_, that is to say, the shoot that would come out of the ground, pushing on towards the _point_ of the barley-corn. It starts from the bottom, where the root comes out; and it goes on towards the other end; and would, if _kept moist_, come out at that other end when the root was about an inch long. So that, when you have got the _root to start_, by soaking and turning in heap, the spear is _on its way_. If you look in through the skin, you will see it; and now observe; when the _point of the spear_ has got along as far as the _middle of the barley-corn_, you should take your barley and _dry it_. How easy would every family, and especially every farmer, do this, if it were not for the punishment attached to it! The persons in the "unkent places" before mentioned, dry the malt in their _oven_! But let us hope that the labourer will soon be able to get malt without exposing himself to punishment as a _violater of the law_.

KEEPING COWS.

111. As to the _use_ of _milk_ and of that which proceeds from milk, in a family, very little need be said. At a certain age bread and milk are _all_ that a child wants. At a later age they furnish one meal a day for children. Milk is, at all seasons, good to _drink_. In the making of puddings, and in the making of _bread_ too, how useful is it! Let any one who has eaten none but baker's bread for a good while, taste bread home-baked, mixed with milk instead of with water; and he will find what the difference is. There is this only to be observed, that in _hot weather_, bread mixed with milk will not _keep so long_ as that mixed with water. It will of course turn _sour_ sooner.

112. Whether the milk of a cow be to be consumed by a cottage family in the shape of milk, or whether it be to be made to yield butter, skim-milk, and buttermilk, must depend on circumstances. A woman that has no child, or only one, would, perhaps, find it best to make _some butter_ at any rate. Besides, skim-milk and bread (the milk being boiled) is quite strong food enough for any children's breakfast, even when they begin to go to work; a fact which I state upon the most ample and satisfactory experience, very seldom having ever had any other sort of breakfast myself till I was more than ten years old, and I was in the fields at work full four years before that. I will here mention that it gave me singular pleasure to see a boy, just turned of _six_, helping his father to _reap_, in Sussex, this last summer. He did little, to be sure; but it was _something_. His father set him into the ridge at a great distance before him; and when he came up to the place, he found a _sheaf_ cut; and, those who know what it is to reap, know how pleasant it is to find now and then a sheaf cut ready to their hand. It was no small thing to see a boy fit to be trusted with so dangerous a thing as a reap-hook in his hands, at an age when "young masters" have nursery-maids to cut their victuals for them, and to see that they do not fall out of the window, tumble down stairs, or run under carriage-wheels or horses' bellies. Was not this father discharging his duty by this boy much better than he would have been by sending him to a place called a _school_? The boy is in a school here; and an excellent school too: the school of useful labour. I must hear a great deal more than I ever have heard, to convince me, that teaching children to _read_ tends so much to their happiness, their independence of spirit, their manliness of character, as teaching them to _reap_. The creature that is in _want_ must be a _slave_; and to be habituated _to labour cheerfully_ is the only means of preventing nineteen-twentieths of mankind from being in want. I have digressed here; but observations of this sort can, in my opinion, never be too often repeated; especially at a time when all sorts of mad projects are on foot, for what is falsely called _educating_ the people, and when some would do this by a _tax_ that would compel the single man to give part of his earnings to teach the married man's children to read and write.

113. Before I quit the _uses_ to which milk may be put, let me mention, that, as mere _drink_, it is, unless perhaps in case of heavy labour, better, in my opinion, than any beer, however good. I have drinked little else for the last five years, at any time of the day. Skim-milk I mean. If you have not milk enough to wet up your bread with (for a bushel of flour requires about 16 to 18 pints,) you make up the quantity with water, of course; or, which is a very good way, with water that has been put, boiling hot, upon _bran_, and then drained off. This takes the goodness out of the bran to be sure; but _really good bread_ is a thing of so much importance, that it always ought to be the very first object in domestic economy.

114. The cases vary so much, that it is impossible to lay down rules for the application of the produce of a cow, which rules shall fit all cases. I content myself, therefore, with what has already been said on this subject; and shall only make an observation on the _act of milking_, before I come to the chief matter; namely, the _getting of the food for the cow_. A cow should be milked _clean_. Not a drop, if it can be avoided, should be left in the udder. It has been proved that the half pint that comes out _last_ has _twelve times_, I think it is, as much butter in it, as the half pint that comes out _first_. I tried the milk of ten Alderney cows, and, as nearly as I, without being very nice about the matter, could ascertain, I found the difference to be about what I have stated. The udder would seem to be a sort of milk-pan in which the cream is uppermost, and, of course, comes out last, seeing that the outlet is at the bottom. But, besides this, if you do not milk clean, the cow will give less and less milk, and will become dry much sooner than she ought. The _cause_ of this I do not know, but experience has long established the fact.

115. In providing food for a cow we must look, first, at the _sort of cow_; seeing that a cow of one sort will certainly require more than twice as much food as a cow of another sort. For a cottage, a cow of the smallest sort common in England is, on every account, the best; and such a cow will not require above 70 or 80 pounds of good moist food in the twenty-four hours.

116. Now, how to raise this food on 40 rods of ground is what we want to know. It frequently happens that a labourer has _more_ than 40 rods of ground. It more frequently happens, that he has some _common_, some _lane_, some little out-let or other, for a part of the year, at least. In such cases he may make a different disposition of his ground; or may do with less than the 40 rods. I am here, for simplicity's sake, to suppose, that he have 40 rods of clear, unshaded land, besides what his house and sheds stand upon; and that he have nothing further in the way of means to keep his cow.

117. I suppose the 40 rods to be _clean_ and _unshaded_; for I am to suppose, that when a man thinks of 5 quarts _of milk a day_, on an average, all the year round, he will not suffer his ground to be encumbered by apple-trees that give him only the means of treating his children to fits of the belly-ache, or with currant and gooseberry bushes, which, though their fruit do very well to _amuse_, really give nothing worthy of the name of _food_, except to the blackbirds and thrushes. The ground is to be _clear_ of trees; and, in the spring, we will suppose it to be _clean_. Then, dig it up _deeply_, or, which is better, _trench_ it, keeping, however, the top _spit_ of the soil _at the top_. Lay it in _ridges_ in April or May about two feet apart, and made high and sharp. When the weeds appear about three inches high, turn the ridges into the furrows (_never moving the ground but in dry weather_,) and bury all the weeds. Do this as often as the weeds get three inches high; and by the fall, you will have really clean ground, and not poor ground.

118. There is the ground then, ready. About the 26th of August, but _not earlier_, prepare a rod of your ground; and put some _manure_ in it (for _some_ you must have,) and sow one half of it with Early York Cabbage Seed, and the other half with Sugar-loaf Cabbage Seed, both of the _true_ sort, in little drills at 8 inches apart, and the seeds thin in the drill. If the plants come up at two inches apart (and they should be thinned if thicker,) you will have a plenty. As soon as fairly out of ground, hoe the ground nicely, and pretty deeply, and again in a few days. When the plants have six leaves, which will be very soon, dig up, make fine, and manure another rod or two, and prick out the plants, 4000 of each in rows at eight inches apart and three inches in the row. Hoe the ground between them often, and they will grow fast and be _straight_ and strong. I suppose that these beds for plants take 4 rods of your ground. Early in November, or, as the weather may serve, a little earlier or later, lay some manure (of which I shall say more hereafter) between the ridges, in the other 36 rods, and turn the ridges over on this manure, and then transplant your plants on the ridges at 15 inches apart. Here they will stand the winter; and you must see that the slugs do not eat them. If any plants fail, you have plenty in the bed where you prick them out; for your 36 rods will not require more than 4000 plants. If the winter be very hard, and bad for plants, you cannot _cover_ 36 rods; but you may the _bed_ where the rest of your plants are. A little litter, or straw, or dead grass, or fern, laid along between the rows and the plants, not to cover the leaves, will preserve them completely. When people complain of _all_ their plants being "_cut off_," they have, in fact nothing to _complain_ of but their own extreme carelessness. If I had a gardener who complained of _all_ his plants being cut off, I should cut him off pretty quickly. If those in the 36 rods fail, or fail in part, fill up their places, later in the winter, by plants from the bed.

119. If you find the ground dry at the top during the winter, hoe it, and particularly near the plants, and rout out all slugs and insects. And when March comes, and the ground _is dry_, hoe deep and well, and earth the plants up close to the lower leaves. As soon as the plants begin to _grow_, dig the ground with a spade clean and well, and let the spade go as near to the plants as you can without actually _displacing the plants_. Give them another digging in a month; and, if weeds come in the mean-while, _hoe_, and let not one live a week. Oh! "what a deal of _work_!" Well! but it is for _yourself_, and, besides, it is not all to be done in a day; and we shall by-and-by see what it is altogether.

120. By the first of June; I speak of the South of England, and there is also some difference in seasons and soils; but, generally speaking, by the first of June you will have _turned-in cabbages_, and soon you will have the Early Yorks _solid_. And by the first of June you may get your cow, one that is about to calve, or that has just calved, and at this time such a cow as you will want will not, thank God, cost above five pounds.

121. I shall speak of the place to keep her in, and of the manure and litter, by-and-by. At present I confine myself to her mere food. The 36 rods, if the cabbages all stood till they got _solid_, would give her food for 200 days, at 80 pounds weight per day, which is more than she would eat. But you must use some, at first, that are not solid; and, then, some of them will split before you can use them. But you will have pigs to help off with them, and to gnaw the heads of the stumps. Some of the sugar-loaves may have been planted out in the spring; and thus these 36 rods will get you along to some time in September.

122. Now mind, in March, and again in April, sow more _Early Yorks_, and get them to be fine stout plants, as you did those in the fall. Dig up the ground and manure it, and, as fast as you cut cabbages, plant cabbages; and in the same manner and with the same cultivation as before. Your last planting will be about the middle of August, with _stout plants_, and these will serve you into the month of November.

123. Now we have to provide from _December to May inclusive_; and that, too, out of this same piece of ground. In November there must be, arrived at perfection, 3000 turnip plants. These, _without the greens_, must weigh, on an average, 5 pounds, and this, at 80 pounds a day, will keep the cow 187 days; and there are but 182 days in these six months. The greens will have helped put the latest cabbages to carry you through November, and perhaps into December. But for these six months, you must _depend_ on nothing but the Swedish turnips.

124. And now, how are these to be had _upon the same ground that bears_ the cabbages? That we are now going to see. When you plant out your cabbages at the out-set, put first a row of Early Yorks, then a row of Sugar-loaves, and so on throughout the piece. Of course, as you are to use the Early Yorks first, you will cut every other row; and the Early Yorks that you are to plant in summer will go into the intervals. By-and-by the Sugar-loaves are cut away, and in their place will come Swedish turnips, you digging and manuring the ground as in the case of the cabbages: and, at last, you will find about 16 rods where you will have found it too late, and _unnecessary_ besides, to plant any second crop of cabbages. Here the Swedish turnips will stand in rows at two feet apart, (and always a foot apart in the row,) and thus you will have three thousand turnips; and if these do not weigh five pounds each on an average, the fault must be in the _seed_ or in the management.

125. The Swedish turnips are raised in this manner. You will bear in mind the _four rods_ of ground in which you have sowed and pricked out your cabbage plants. The plants that will be left there will, in April, serve you for _greens_, if you ever eat any, though bread and bacon are very good without greens, and rather better than with. At any rate, the pig, which has strong powers of digestion, will consume this herbage. In a part of these four rods you will, in March and April, as before directed, have sown and raised your Early Yorks for the summer planting. Now, in the _last week of May_, prepare a quarter of a rod of this ground, and sow it, precisely as directed for the Cabbage-seed, with Swedish turnip-seed; and sow a quarter of a rod _every three days_, till you have sowed _two rods_. If the _fly appear_, cover the rows over in the _day-time_ with cabbage leaves, and take the leaves off at night; hoe well between the plants; and when they are safe from the fly, _thin_ them to four inches apart in the row. The two rods will give you nearly _five thousand plants_, which is 2000 more than you will want. From this bed you draw your plants to transplant in the ground where the cabbages have stood, as before directed. You should transplant none much _before_ the middle of July, and not much _later_ than the middle of August. In the two rods, whence you take your turnip plants, you may leave plants to come to perfection, at two feet distances each way; and this will give you _over and above_, 840 pounds weight of turnips. For the other two rods will be ground enough for you to sow your cabbage plants in at the end of August, as directed for last year.

126. I should now proceed to speak of the manner of harvesting, preserving, and using the crops; of the manner of feeding the cow; of the shed for her; of the managing of the manure, and several other less important things; but these, for want of room here, must be reserved for the beginning of my next Number. After, therefore, observing that the Turnip plants must be transplanted in the same way that Cabbage plants are; and that both ought to be transplanted in _dry_ weather and in ground just _fresh digged_, I shall close this Number with the notice of two points which I am most anxious to impress upon the mind of every reader.