o
git on, I'd say to him, jist as I says it to you now, "Go to Rooshia!"
Why so? says you. Well, jist this way. You see, cotton-mills and
mowin'-machines and steam-ploughs and sich are quite new ideas out
there; and they haven't got the trick of workin' 'em properly, not yet;
so that any man as _has_ got it is pretty safe to git anything he likes
to ax in the way o' wages. Why, _I_ knowed a man once--common
factory-hand he was when he started: couldn't read nor write, nor
nothin'; but he had his wits about him, all the same,--well, _he_ cum
out here 'bout ten year ago, and went to some place on the Volga, with
some crack-jaw name or other that I can't reck'lect. First year he was
there he got as good pay as any overseer at home; next year he was
overseer himself; two year arter that he owned his own mill, he did; and
now, jist t'other day I gits a letter from him to say he's goin' home
ag'in, with money in both pockets, and a-goin' to buy a big house and a
bit o' ground, and I don't know what all. And if _that_ ain't gittin'
on, I should jist like to know what is!

But you mustn't think, neither, as it's all jist as easy as supping
porridge: it ain't that, nohow. I can tell yer, if you was to go into
one o' them hot work-rooms on a roastin' day in July, with the
thermometer anywhere you like above a hundred, you'd feel more like
lyin' down in the shade and havin' a drink o' beer than workin' hard for
nine or ten hours on end. They say we overseers have an easy life of it.
I wish them as says so had jist got to try it themselves for a day or
two. Then, ag'in, most likely there's only one road from your place to
the nearest town, and jist when you want to send off your stuff it'll
come on pourin' rain for ever so long, and the whole road'll be nothin'
but plash and mash, like a dish of cabbage-soup; and there the stuff'll
have to lie idle for weeks and weeks, and you've jist got to grin and
bear it. And in them parts, instead of one good pelt and have done with
it, it keeps on drip, drip, drip, for days and days in a sneaking
half-and-half kind o' way, as if it hadn't the pluck to come out with a
good hearty pour. The very thunder don't make a good round-mouthed peal
like it does at home, but a nasty jabberin' row, jist as if it was
a-tryin' to talk French. And, altogether, it is a place to try a chap's
temper: it is, indeed.

Are the native workmen good for much? says you. Well, that depends
pretty much on how you look