The tobacco was a treat. Men in the workhouse are not allowed tobacco unless their age is over seventy. Even those who have an allowance are not satisfied, and it is the custom for visiting friends to bring along a little tobacco for a present when they call at the workhouse. As for the old women, they complain about their allowance of tea. They are all very fond of the teapot by the time they go to the workhouse, and when friends call on one of the woman paupers they present her with an ounce of tea, a little sugar, and possibly a few new-laid eggs.

While the old people were lounging and smoking, a red-uniformed band of music arrived, and spent two hours playing to the company. The gentleman who was the patron of the day joined in the paupers’ celebration to the extent of lunching with a party of friends on the other side of the wide lawn. He thought the old people would enjoy themselves best if left alone. They were not at all demonstrative,—their vitality had ebbed too low for that; but in their way they found it a grand occasion—one to talk of for weeks afterward. Like all good things, however, it had to have an end, and at eight o’clock the paupers were helped into their green-arbored wagons and sent back to the workhouse, — where destiny had appointed that sooner or later what was left of their broken lives should flicker out.

In summing up the laborer’s life as a whole, it cannot be said to lack a certain cheerfulness and even gayety, in spite of hardships and in spite of the shadow that the workhouse casts over the elderly and decrepit. Wants are few and cares sit lightly. It is characteristic of the laboring folk that they live day by day. If they have work and food and housing now, they are not apprehensive about the morrow. It is people who have much to lose that worry. Happiness, too, depends largely on companionship, and that, both in their daily work and in their leisure, the English peasantry never lack. Loneliness is not a feature of farm life in England, as it too often is here in America. The village gossip, the gatherings at the inn taprooms, the services at church and chapel, and the holidays and gala occasions furnish constantly recurring change and relaxation. The lives of the laborers are far from being empty and far from being uninteresting to themselves. Indeed, in my acquaintance with them, I found very few who had any desire to exchange the good of which they knew in beautiful old England for the affluent uncertainties of our great continent beyond the seas.