draughts, I found an old man sitting over a little coal fire made between some bricks on the hearth. He had lost all his teeth, and a bad asthma made him pant sadly for breath; but he too was content with his lot.
"I be eighty come Michaelmas," he said, "and have lived thirty or forty years in this place; I was bred at Honeybourn, in Gloucester, and am the last of my family."
He was deeply and truly pious; but his experience was somewhat like that of the patriarch Jacob. In answer to a question as to whether he had had much trouble:—
"No man more," he replied. "It's a wurruld of trouble, and I shall be glad to be out of it."
He had had several children, but did not appear to regret it, or to think that that fact had increased his misery. A sick wife had been his life-long affliction; the poor old body lay above sixteen months bedridden.
Withal he was no grumbler, but disposed to think he had all that he was entitled to. "Yes," said he, "I liked to go to church as long as I could; I was bred up to church. Our parson be very kind; he comes to see me often, and does good to body as well as soul." Referring to the Labourers' Union he said, "I don't think much o' this 'ere Union, and I'll tell yer why, sir. Here have I served one man or his father this forty year, and never had a misword. All the work I have done he's paid me for. How do you think, sir, such a maayster 'ud like it if I was to fly in his face and ask him for more wages? We must all do our duty, sir. The maaysters must do their duty to the men, and the men must do their duty to their maaysters;" and suddenly waxing warm, the old man exclaimed, "England expects every man to do his duty, sir, as Lord Nelson said."
The old labourer's views of life were especially fitting for a man on the brink of the grave. It was well for him to depart in love and charity, and with a good word for all. But his miserable circumstances cried out against the system under which he had lived. He may have had a master who neither defrauded nor abused him, but his life had been little better than the endurance of a sentence of perpetual imprisonment with hard labour. Day by day, year by year, he had trudged the weary round, just as the
