The Toilers of the FieldLongmans, Green, 1907 - 327 pages |
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Expressions et termes fréquents
Absalom agricultural labourer agriculturists allotment arable bacon bedrooms beer better birds boys bread built bushes C. J. LONGMAN cheese corn cottage court-leet dairy dairymaid daughters dinner ditch door drink early erected eyes fact farm farmers farmhouse field floor flowers garden girl grass green ground grow half-past hand hard harvest hayfield hedge hour labourer's land landlord liquor living Long Ditton look Madge meadow miles milk mother navvy never night ORCHIS MASCULA parish perhaps poor pot liquor quit-rent rent RICHARD JEFFERIES rise road roof rude Salisbury Cathedral season shilling side Smith Smock-frocks spring stand stone summer sward Swindon tenant thatch thee thick things tion Tolworth town trees tural village wages walk walls week wife Wiltshire wind winter woman women wood workhouse young
Fréquemment cités
Page 228 - They are too ungrateful for the many great benefits which are bountifully supplied them — the brandy, the soup, and fresh meat readily extended without stint from the farmer's home in sickness to the cottage are too quickly forgotten. They who were most benefited are often the first to most loudly complain and to backbite. Never once in all my observation have I heard a labouring man or woman make a grateful remark; and yet I can confidently say that there is no class of persons in England who...
Page 325 - The roar of the rolling wheels sinks and becomes distant as the sound of a waterfall when dreams are coming. All the abundant human life is smoothed and levelled, the abruptness of the individuals lost in the flowing current, like separate flowers drawn along in a border, like music heard so far off that the notes are molten and the theme only remains.
Page 326 - But a square potent. For London is the only real place in the world. The cities turn towards London as young partridges run to their mother. The cities know that they are not real. They are only houses and wharves, and bricks and stucco ; only outside. The minds of all men in them, merchants, artists, thinkers, are bent on London.
Page 93 - His realism varies from plain statement, such as this description of the milker's winter morning : ' To put on coarse nailed boots, weighing fully seven pounds, gaiters up to the knee, a short great-coat 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...
Page 212 - His food may, perhaps, have something to do with the deadened slowness which seems to pervade everything he does — there seems a lack of vitality about him. It consists chiefly of bread and cheese, with bacon twice or thrice a week, varied with onions, and if he be a milker (on some farms) with a good " tuck-out " at his employer's expense on Sundays. On ordinary days he dines at the fashionable hour of six or seven in the evening — that is, about that time his cottage scents the road with a...
Page 228 - never once in all my observation have I heard a labouring man or woman make a grateful remark, and yet I can confidently say that there is no class of persons in England who receive so many attentions and benefits from their superiors as the agricultural labourers."* Some things are missing from this faithful portrait.
Page 187 - He minded when that sharp old Miss — was always coming round with tracts and blankets, like taking some straw to a lot of pigs, and lecturing his missis about economy. What a fuss she made, and scolded his wife as if she was a thief for having her fifteenth boy ! His missis turned on her at last and said: 'Lor' miss, that's all the pleasure me an
Page 90 - They walk off perhaps some forty or fifty miles, take a job mowing or harvesting, and after a change of scenery and associates return in the later part of the autumn, full of the things they have seen, and eager to relate them to the groups at the cross-roads or the ale-house. The winter is under the best circumstances a hard time for the labourer. It is not altogether that coals are dear' and firewood growing scarcer year by year, but every condition of his daily life has a harshness about it.