An English Farmer's Wife.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IX, Issue 55, 6 February 1885, Page 4

An English Farmer's Wife.

" We's up at four o'clock, for yer must be up betimes, the young poultry are soft, and can't bide long whiles without food. At a quarter to four I steps out of my bed just sharp like, and sings out to the girVand they sips forth from bed as quick as eyer they may, and we jumps on with our clothes iind minds our beasts, whatever it may be that God has given us to look after. And then at seven o'clock Bilston and all of us have breakfast. We has home-made bread, and therms bread and milk for the gals ; and we always has a slip of bacon on Sundays. After we have had breakfast, 11 continued Mrs Bilston, master he bids them settle themselves, and we all sits this wise: Polly there and Tom yonder, and Bilston m his arm-chair, 11 and the good woman enumerated and showed me were each member of her family sat. " Then the master he calls for the family Bible, as belonged to his grandmother, m which is written how his father's sister died of the measles when she was four years old ; and he begins at the first chapter of Genesis and works right on forward like till the book is ended, and then he starts and begins again. He alwaya reads one chapter, and never no more and never no less, and when anything as he thinks applies like he says to one of them, 4 Now you take and mind that, my lad or my wench, 1 as the case might be; arid Ithen when he has said a few words of learning and minding we gets up, and each of us goes off to his or her business. I churns regu* lar three times a week, and the girls they get off to make tho beds or -scrubbing-, or maybe to the calves or to the poultry."