s raining, I
saw him in the churchyard digging a grave. "Haven't been mowing to-day,
have you?" "Yes," he said cheerily. Mowing is, perhaps, the most
fatiguing work a man can do, but fatigue was nothing to this man where a
few shillings could be earned. His ordinary wages, I believe, are
eighteen shillings a week, but during last winter he was out of work for
six or eight weeks.

I have known this man, and others also, to make now and then quite a
little harvest, amounting to several pounds, at the unsavoury work of
cleaning out cess-pits. One man, indeed--a farm-labourer by day--had for
a time a sort of trade connection in the parish for this employment, and
would add the labour of two or three nights a week to that of his days;
but, of course, he could not keep it up for long. It is highly-paid
work, as it ought to be; but the ten shillings or so that a man may earn
at it four or five times a year come rather as a welcome windfall than
as a part of income upon which he can rely.

The seasonal employments are disappearing from the neighbourhood, as
agriculture gives place to the residential interests. Hop-picking used
to be the most notable of them, and even now, spite of the
much-diminished acreage under hops, it is found necessary at the schools
to defer the long holiday until September, because it would be
impossible to get the children to school while the hops are being
picked. For all the family goes into the gardens--all, that is to say,
who have no constant work. The season now lasts some three weeks, during
which a family may earn anything from two to four pounds. At this season
a few of the more experienced and trustworthy men--my friend who mows,
and digs graves, and runs errands is one of them--do better in the
hop-kilns at "drying" than in the gardens. Theirs is an anxious, a
responsible, and almost a sleepless duty. The pay for it, when I last
heard, was two guineas a week, and--pleasant survival from an older mode
of employment--the prudent hop-grower gives his dryers a pound at
Christmas as a sort of retaining-fee. It is to be observed that failure
of the crop is too frequent an occurrence. In years when there are no
hops, the people feel the want of their extra money all the following
winter.

Another custom, as it is all but extinct, needs only a passing mention
now. No longer do large gangs of our labourers--with some of their
womenfolk, perhaps--troop off "down into Sussex" for the August
harvest