DRESS AND FOOD OF VILLAGE LABOURERS.
«, The village labourer now is a wholly different man from what he was in tbo last generation He wears different ol thes, eats different food, lives in a different house, and' works in a different manner. Ho wears broadcloth on Sundays, and sometimes at his work ton. The old smockfrock is entirely discarded, except by a few village patriarchs, who cling to it just as gentlemen hero and
there olnng to their pigtails in the reign of George IV. That decent garb will soon become a thing of the past, equally with the more picturesque velveteen coat, corduroy knee-breeches, well-fitting grey worsted stockings, and neat well-greased boots, which formed the Sunday attire of
the younger peasantry thirty years ago. They must all now have their black coats to their backs, and badlymade trousers on their legs, and badlypolished boots on their feet ; the consequence being that they do not look a
quarter so much like gentlemen as they did in their old costume ; and are all the poorer for looking all the more vulgar. The average day-labourer in regular work now eats butcher's meat four time a week. He will have broiled ham for breakfast; and at harvest time, when his wife, or often his little girl, canies out "father's tea" to him in the meadows, if you lift the corner of her apron, or peep into her basket, ten to one you will iind a tin of preserved salmon or a box., of sardines stowed away between tho loaf and the jug. Look into the village shop and see the tale it tells— tinned meats and soups, delicacies and
"kickshaws," which, to "the rude forefathers of the hamlet," would have seemed, as strange and wonderful as the Tokay and of Lord do Mowbray seemed to the savages of Hell Houso"yard. Grocery and chandlery are nowbrought round to the villages in vans at a much lower rate than the local shopkeepers can afford to sell them at. Necessaries are far cheaper than they wore in tho labourer's childhood, and luxuries have now become as cheap as necessaries were then.—T. E. Kebbel, in Blackwood's Magazine.
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Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2570, 29 December 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)
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360DRESS AND FOOD OF VILLAGE LABOURERS. Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2570, 29 December 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)
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