ed with the flour for the first batch, and left
to "prove." The process of making the dough occupied until about one
o'clock, and then followed two hours of comparative tranquillity,
during which the men adjourned to the retirement of certain millers'
sacks hard by, which they rolled up cleverly into extempore beds, and
seemed to prefer to the board. The proving takes about two hours, but
varies with the temperature. If the dough is left too long, a sour
batch, or a "pitch in," is the result. It is then cut out, weighed, and
"handed up;" after which it stands while the dough for the second batch
is being made, and those fatal rolls, around which so much of this
contest is likely to turn, are being got forward. It must be understood
that I am here describing what took place in my typical bakehouse.
Proceedings will of course vary in details according to the
neighbourhood, the season, and other circumstances. This makes, as my
informant suggested, the race of bakers necessarily in some degree a
varium atque mutabile genus, whom it is difficult to bind by rigid "hard
and fast" lines. The first batch is in the oven at four, and is drawn
about 5.30. During the intervals there has been the preparation of fancy
bread and the "getting off" of the rolls. Then the "cottage" batch is
moulded and got off, and comes out of the oven at eight. From three
o'clock up to this hour there has been active work enough for everybody,
and I felt myself considerably in the way, adjourning ever and anon to
the master's snuggery above stairs to note down my experiences. As for
the men, they must have fancied that I was an escaped lunatic, with
harmless eccentricities; and the fourth hand, who was young, gazed at me
all night with a fixed and sleepy glare, as though on his guard lest I
should be seized with a refractory fit. At eight the close atmosphere of
the bakehouse was exchanged for the fresh morning breeze by three out of
the four hands, who went to deliver the bread. The foreman remained with
the master to work at "small goods" until about one, when he prepares
the ferment for the next night's baking. All concerned can get their
operations over about one or half-past one; so that, reckoning them to
begin at half-past twelve, and deducting two hours of "sweat and tears"
from one to three, when they can sleep if they will, there are some
eleven hours of active labour. After the delivery of the bread is over,
it should be mentioned, each man ha