eir powers, and then retiring from
the table to take an emetic of mustard and return to a second gorging.
There is scarcely any limit to their power of absorbing beer. I have
known reapers and mowers make it their boast that they could lie on
their backs and never take the wooden bottle (in the shape of a small
barrel) from their lips till they had drunk a gallon, and from the feats
I have seen I verily believe it a fact. The beer they get is usually
poor and thin, though sometimes in harvest the farmers bring out a taste
of strong liquor, but not till the work is nearly over; for from this
very practice of drinking enormous quantities of small beer the labourer
cannot drink more than a very limited amount of good liquor without
getting tipsy. This is why he so speedily gets inebriated at the
alehouse. While mowing and reaping many of them lay in a small cask.

They are much better clothed now than formerly. Corduroy trousers and
slops are the usual style. Smock-frocks are going out of use, except for
milkers and faggers. Almost every labourer has his Sunday suit, very
often really good clothes, sometimes glossy black, with the regulation
"chimneypot." His unfortunate walk betrays him, dress how he will. Since
labour has become so expensive it has become a common remark among the
farmers that the labourer will go to church in broadcloth and the
masters in smock-frocks. The labourer never wears gloves--that has to
come with the march of the times; but he is particularly choice over
his necktie. The women must dress in the fashion. A very respectable
draper in an agricultural district was complaining to me the other day
that the poorest class of women would have everything in the fashionable
style, let it change as often as it would. In former times, if he laid
in a stock of goods suited to tradesmen, and farmers' wives and
daughters, if the fashion changed, or they got out of date, he could
dispose of them easily to the servants. Now no such thing. The quality
did not matter so much, but the style must be the style of the day--no
sale for remnants. The poorest girl, who had not got two yards of
flannel on her back, must have the same style of dress as the squire's
daughter--Dolly Vardens, chignons, and parasols for ladies who can work
all day reaping in the broiling sun of August! Gloves, kid, for hands
that milk the cows!

The cottages now are infinitely better than they were. There is scarcely
room for further improve