filth. Now, a good deal of this refuse is the remains of imperfect
cooking--masses of soddened cabbage, part of which only is eaten, and the
rest stored for the pig or thrown into the ditch. The place smells of
soaking, saturated cabbage for yards and yards round about.

But it is much easier to condemn the cottage cook than to show her how to
do better. It is even doubtful whether professed scientific cooks could
tell her what to do. The difficulty arises from the rough, coarse taste of
the labourer, and the fact, which it is useless to ignore, that he must
have something solid, and indeed, bulky. Thin clear soups--though proved
to abound with nourishment and of delicious flavour--are utterly beside
his wants. Give him the finest soup; give him _pates_, or even more meaty
_entrees_, and his remark will be that it is very nice, but he wants
'summat to eat.' His teeth are large, his jaws strong, his digestive
powers such as would astonish a city man; he likes solid food, bacon,
butcher's meat, cheese, or something that gives him a sense of fulness,
like a mass of vegetables. This is the natural result of his training and
work in the fields. The materials used by the cottage cook are often quite
capable of being made into agreeable dishes, but then those dishes would
not suit the man. All the soups and kickshaws--though excellent in
themselves--in the world are not, for his purpose, equal to a round of
beef or a side of bacon. Let any one go and labour daily in the field, and
they will come quickly to the same opinion. Yet something might certainly
be done in the way of preventing waste. The real secret lies in the
education of the women when young--that is, for the future. But, taking
the present day, looking at things as they actually exist, it is no use
abusing or lecturing the cottage cook. She might, perhaps, be persuaded to
adopt a systematic plan of disposing of the refuse.

The Saturday half-holiday is scarcely so closely observed in rural labour
as in urban. The work closes earlier, that is, so far as the day labourer
is concerned, for he gets the best of this as of other things. But,
half-holiday or not, cows have to be fed and milked, sheep must be looked
after, and the stable attended to, so that the regular men do not get off
much sooner. In winter, the days being short, they get little advantage
from the short time; in summer they do. Compensation is, however, as much
as possible afforded to the settled men