quarter of an acre of ground.
One good load of wheat or rye straw is all that you would want for the
winter, and half of one for the summer; and you would have more than
enough dung to exchange against this straw.

133. Now, as to _the quantity of labour_ that the cultivation of the land
will demand in _a year_. We will suppose the whole to have _five complete
diggings_, and say nothing about the little matters of sowing and planting
and hoeing and harvesting, all which are a mere trifle. We are supposing
the owner to be _an able labouring man_; and such a man will dig 12 rods
of ground in a day. Here are 200 rods to be digged, and here are little
less than 17 days of work at 12 hours in the day; or 200 _hours'_ work, to
be done in the course of the long days of spring and summer, while it is
light long before _six_ in the morning, and long after six at night. What
_is it_, then? Is it not better than time spent in the ale-house, or in
creeping about after a miserable hare? Frequently, and most frequently,
there will be a _boy_, if not two, big enough to help. And (I only give
this as a _hint_) I saw, on the 7th of November last (1822,) _a very
pretty woman_, in the village of _Hannington, in Wiltshire, digging_ a
piece of ground and planting it with Early Cabbages, which she did as
handily and as neatly as any gardener that ever I saw. The ground was
_wet_, and therefore, _to avoid treading the digged ground in that state_,
she had her line extended, and put in the rows as she advanced in her
digging, standing _in the trench_ while she performed the act of planting,
which she did with great nimbleness and precision. Nothing could be more
skilfully or beautifully done. Her clothes were neat, clean, and tight
about her. She had turned her handkerchief down from her neck, which, with
the glow that the work had brought into her cheeks, formed an object which
I do not say would have made me _actually stop my chaise_, had it not been
for the occupation in which she was engaged; but, all taken together, the
temptation was too strong to be resisted. But there is the _Sunday_; and I
know of no law, human or divine, that forbids a labouring man to dig or
plant his garden on Sunday, if the good of his family demand it; and if
he cannot, without injury to that family, find other time to do it in.
Shepherds, carters, pigfeeders, drovers, coachmen, cooks, footmen,
printers, and numerous others, work on the Sundays. Theirs are deemed