ld now; and his career so far, from the time when he
left school, may be soon outlined. It is true, I cannot say what his
first employment was; but it can be guessed; for there is no doubt that
he began as an errand-boy, and that presently, growing bigger, he took a
turn at driving a gravel-cart to and fro between the gravel-pits and
the railway. Assuming this, I can go on to speak from my own knowledge.
His growth and strength came early; I remember noticing him first as a
powerful fellow, not more than seventeen or eighteen years old, but
already doing a man's work as a gravel-digger. When that work slackened
after two or three years, he got employment--not willingly, but because
times were bad--at night-work with the "ballast-train" on the railway.
Exhausting if not brutalizing labour, that is. At ten or eleven at night
the gangs of men start off, travelling in open trucks to the part of the
line they are to repair, and there they work throughout the night, on
wind-swept embankment or in draughty cutting, taking all the weather
that the nights bring up. This man endured it for some twelve months,
until a neglected chill turned to bronchitis and pleurisy, and nearly
ended his life. After that he had a long spell of unemployment, and was
on the point of going back to the ballast-train as a last resource when,
by good fortune, he got his present job. He has been a coal-carter for
three or four years--a fact which testifies to his efficiency. By
half-past six o'clock in the morning he has to be in the stables; then
comes the day on the road, during which he will lift on his back, into
the van and out of it, and perhaps will carry for long distances, nine
or ten tons of coal--say, twenty hundredweight bags every hour; by
half-past five or six in the evening he has put up his horse for the
night; and so his day's work is over, excepting that he has about a mile
to walk home.

Of this employment, which, if the man is lucky, will continue until he
is old and worn-out, we may admit that it is more useful by far--to the
community--than the old village industries were wont to be. Concentrated
upon one kind of effort, it perhaps doubles the productivity of a day's
work. But just because it is so concentrated it cannot yield to the man
himself any variety of delights such as men occupied in the old way were
wont to enjoy. It demands from him but little skill; it neither requires
him to possess a great fund of local information and