CHAPTER XI

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THE BREAK OF DAY.—A FULL HEART.—FAMILIAR THINGS.—THE VILLAGE AT SUNRISE.—FLOWERS.—BIRDS.—DOG KENNELS.—“THE SQUIRE” AND “THE HALL.”—ROOKS.—VISIT TO A SMALL FARM.—THE COWS.—THE MILKING.—THE DAIRY-MAIDS.—THE STABLES.—MANURE.—BONES.—PASTURE.—WHITE CLOVER.—IMPLEMENTS.—CARTS.—THE ENGLISH PLOUGH AND HARROW.

[Sidenote: _FAMILIAR ENGLISH LANDSCAPE._]

_31st May._

It was very early this morning when I became gradually aware of the twittering of house-sparrows, and was soon after brought to more distinct consciousness of time and place by the long clear note of some other stranger bird. I stepped from bed and kneeled at a little, low, latticed window, curtained without by a woodbine. Parting the foliage with my hands, I looked out upon a cluster of low-thatched cottages, half overgrown with ivy; a blooming hawthorn hedge, enclosing a field of heavy grass and clover glistening with dew; a few haystacks; another field beyond, spotted with sheep; a group of trees; and then some low hills, over which the dawn was kindling, with a faint blush, the quiet, smoky clouds in a grey sky. It may seem an uninteresting landscape, but I gazed upon it with great emotion, so great that I wondered at it. Such a scene I had never looked upon before, and yet it was in all its parts as familiar to me as my native valley. Land of our poets! Home of our fathers! Dear old mother England! It would be strange if I were not affected at meeting thee at last face to face.

I dressed, and worked my way through the dark, crooked stairs to the kitchen, where, on the bright steel fender, I found my shoes dry and polished. I walked through the single short street of the hamlet. The houses were set closely together, with neat little gardens about them. They were of every age; one I noticed marked with the date 1630—about the time of the first settlement in Connecticut. It was of stone, narrow, with a steep roof covered with very small slates; the windows much wider than high, and filled with little panes of glass set in strips of lead. Except in this and the materials of which it was built, it was not unlike some of the oldest houses that we yet see in our first Puritan villages, as Hadley and Wethersfield.

[Sidenote: _ROOKS.—VISIT TO A FARM._]

A blackbird hopped before me, but did not whistle, and plenty of little birds were chirping on the walls and rose-bushes, but there was nothing like the singing we have at home of a spring morning.[10] At the other end of the village was another inn—“The Blue Lion,” I believe, and a tall hostler opening the stable doors was dressed just as I wanted to see him—jockey-cap, long striped waistcoat, breeches, and boots.

[10] An English friend, now in America, thinks I am wrong in this.

As I returned I saw the farmer that had been at the inn the night before, and asked him to let me see his cows. He said they were coming down the lane, and if I went with him I should meet them. Passing a group of well-built, neat, low buildings, he said they were the squire’s kennels. They were intended for greyhounds, but he had his pointers in them now.

“The squire’s! But where’s the squire’s house?”

“Yon’s the hall,” pointing to a distant group of trees, above which a light smoke was rising straight up in the calm air, and a number of large black birds were rapidly rising and falling. “Yon’s the hall; ye see the rooks.”

“The rooks! Then those are rooks, are they?”

“Ay, be they—rooks—do ye not know what rooks be?”

“Yes, but we don’t have them in America.”

“No! not have rooks? They be main good in a pie, sir.”

We met the cows, of which there were about a dozen, driven by a boy towards the farm-house. Any one of them would have been considered remarkably fine in America. They were large and in good order; with soft, sleek skin, and like every cow I have seen in England, look as if they had just been polished up for exhibition. He could tell nothing of their breed except of one, a handsome heifer, which he said came partly of Welsh stock. He took me across a field or two to look at a few cows of the squire’s. They were finer than any of his, and seemed to be grade short-horns.

The cows were driven into hovels, which he called _shippens_, and fastened at their mangers by a chain and ring sliding on an upright post (the latest fashion with us), eight of them in an apartment, standing back to back. Three or four of his daughters came out to milk—very good-looking, modest young women, dressed in long, loose, grey, homespun gowns. They had those high wooden tubs to milk in that we see in the old pictures of sentimental milkmaids. It seems constantly like dreaming to see so many of these things that we have only known before in poetry or painting.

The dairy-house and all the farm buildings were of brick, interworked with beams of wood and thatched. They were very small, the farm being only of fifty acres, and the hay and grain always kept in stacks. The arrangements for saving manure were poor—much the same as on any tolerably good farm with us—a hollowed yard with a pool of liquid on one side. He bought some dung and bones in Liverpool, but not much. He esteemed bones most highly, and said they did immense good hereabout. They made a sweeter, stronger, and more permanent pasture. Where he had applied them twelve years ago, at the rate of a ton to an acre, he could see their effect yet. He took me into an adjoining field which, he said, was one of the best pastures in the village. It had been ploughed in narrow lands, and the ridges left high, when it was laid down. The sward was thicker, better _bottomed_, than any I ever saw in America. He sowed about a bushel of grass seeds to the acre, seeding down with oats. For cheese pasture, he valued white clover more than any thing else, and had judged, from the taste of American cheese, that we did not have it. For meadows to be mowed for hay, he preferred sainfoin and ray-grass. He had lately under-drained some of his lowest land with good effect. His soil is mostly a stiff clay resting on a ledge of rocks.

The farm-carts were clumsy and heavy (for horses), with very large wheels with broad tires and huge hubs, as you have seen the English carts pictured. The plough was a very long, sharp, narrow one, calculated to plough about seven inches deep, and turn a slice ten inches wide, with a single pair of horses. The stilts, of iron, were long and low, and the beam, also of iron, very high, with a goose-neck curve. It is a very beautiful instrument, graceful and strong; but its appearance of lightness is deceptive, the whole being of iron; and this, with its great length, though adding to its efficiency for nice, accurate work in perfectly smooth and clear, long fields, would entirely unfit it for most of our purposes. On the rocky, irregular, hill-side farms of New England, or the stump lands of the West, it would be perfectly useless; but I should think it might be an admirable plough for our New York wheat lands, or perhaps for the prairies after they had been once broken.

[Sidenote: _THE ENGLISH PLOUGH._]

The harrow used on the farm was also of iron, frame and all, in three oblong sections, hinged together. These were about all the tools I saw, and they were left in a slovenly way, lying about the farm-yard and in the road.

[Illustration: THE ENGLISH PLOUGH (_vertical_ and _horizontal_)]

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