to a few dying embers. The older people especially go to bed
early. Going to some cottages once for a parish paper that had been
circulated for signature, I rapped at the closed door. This was at
half-past seven one evening in November. Again and again I hammered at
the door; at last an old woman put her head out of window, and the
following colloquy ensued:--

"What do 'ee want?"

"The paper; have you signed it?"

"Lor, I doan't know. He's on the table--a bin ther ever since a come.
Thee's can lift th' latch an' take 'un. _We bin gone to bed this two
hours._"

They must have gone upstairs at half-past five. To rise at five of a
summer's morning, and see the azure of the sky and the glorious sun, may
be, perhaps, no great hardship, although there are few persons who could
long remain poetical on bread and cheese. But to rise at five on a dark
winter's morning is a very different affair. To put on coarse nailed
boots, weighing fully seven pounds, gaiters up above the knee, a short
greatcoat of some heavy material, and to step out into the driving rain
and trudge wearily over field after field of wet grass, with the
furrows full of water; then to sit on a three-legged stool, with mud and
manure half-way up the ankles, and milk cows with one's head leaning
against their damp, smoking hides for two hours, with the rain coming
steadily drip, drip, drip--this is a very different affair.

The "fogger" on a snowy morning in the winter has to encounter about the
most unpleasant circumstances imaginable. Icicles hang from the eaves of
the rick, and its thatch is covered with snow. Up the slippery ladder in
the dark morning, one knee out upon the snow-covered thatch, he plunges
the broad hay-knife in and cuts away an enormous truss--then a great
prong is stuck into this, a prong made on purpose, with extra thick and
powerful handle, and the truss, well bound round with a horse-hair rope,
is hoisted on the head and shoulders. This heavy weight the fogger has
to carry perhaps half-a-mile through the snow; the furrows in the field
are frozen over, but his weight crashes through the ice, slush into the
chilly water. Rain, snow, or bitter frost, or still more bitter east
winds--"harsh winds," as he most truly calls them--the fogger must take
no heed of either, for the cows must be fed.

A quart of threepenny ale for breakfast, with a hunch of bread and
cheese, then out to work again in the weather, let it be what it may.
The cow