{289}
CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
COTTAGE IDEAS.
IN ALL SHADES.
UNPOPULAR RELATIONSHIPS.
SPIRITED AWAY.
HOW TO PROVE A WILL.
AN OCEAN MYSTERY.
No. 123.—Vol. III.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, MAY 8, 1886.
COTTAGE IDEAS.
BY RICHARD JEFFERIES.
Passing by the kitchen-door, I heard Louisa, themaid, chanting to a child on her knee:
To rightly understand this rhyme, you must singit with long-drawn emphasis on each word,lengthening it into at least two syllables; thefirst a sort of hexameter, the second a pentameterof sound:
The last line is to come off more trippingly,like an ‘aside.’ This old sing-song had doubtlessbeen handed down from the times when thelabourers really did steal sheep, a crime happilyextinct with cheap bread. Louisa was one ofthe rare old sort—hard-working, and alwaysready; never complaining, but satisfied with anyfood there chanced to be; sensible and sturdy;a woman who could be thoroughly dependedon. Her boxes were full of good dresses, of asolid, unassuming kind, such as would wearwell—a perfect wardrobe. Her purse was alwayswell supplied with money; she had money savedup, and she sent money to her parents: yether wages, until late years, had been small. Indoing her duty to others, she did good to herself.A duchess would have been glad to haveher in her household. She had been in farmhouseservice from girlhood, and had doubtlesslearned much from good housewives; farmers’wives are the best of all teachers; and thegirls, for their own sakes, had much better beunder them than wasting so much time learninguseless knowledge at compulsory schools.
was another of her rhymes. Freckles come inwith summer, but never appear on a dark skin,so that the freckled