as to be willing to go to bed and to sleep when it grew dark without a whimper. The father said he could not read or write, but he sent all his children to school, for he "knew the miss of it," and he told me with a glow of pride that the schoolmistress said that the little bright, intelligent girl by his side was the best scholar she had.
The house he said had "common rights," and possibly it had, as it was evidently an old one, and might from its mere continuance for sixty years have itself become a freehold, and turned the privileges it had taken into legal rights. On this common, through the kindness of the late lord of the manor, every poor cottager has permission to turn out ten sheep; while upon another I found the lord doing all he could to encourage the people to keep cows, but it did not appear that in either case many avail themselves of the opportunity. There are no doubt some cases where from exceptional causes the people make good use of their common, but as a rule the majority are too poor to take advantage of their situation. A cow or a sheep implies food and housing in winter, and they have neither the means to purchase the one nor the convenience for the other.
Perhaps the most general use made of the commons is to cut the fern, to make litter for the pigs, and to get firing for the house. In some places coal has superseded the necessity for seeking much of the latter, but in the more remote parts wood and turf is the only fuel known. With fires made from them the cottagers still smoke the bacon which they hang up their chimneys. In seasons when fruit is scarce, the blackberries and other wild fruit found on these commons afford quite a little addition to their year's income.
Fowls are not much kept. They, too, cannot live solely on the land, and are a constant source of ill-will where there are neighbours. Geese and donkeys are characteristic features of every Surrey common. Notwithstanding the objection to the former, they are found everywhere. Not that they are always the property of the cottagers; in some cases they only watch them for others. Bees are much kept in some parts, and produce fragrant honey, feeding as they do on the wild thyme and marjoram, and the purple-blossomed heather.
