prolonged and rendered more enjoyable by
the cheapening of oranges.

SHARPENING THE SCYTHE.

IN the heart of a high table-land that
overlooks many square leagues of the rich scenery
of Devonshire, the best scythe-stone is found.
The whole face of the enormous cliff in which
it is contained is honeycombed with minute
quarries; half-way down there is a waggon
road, entirely formed of the sand cast out from
them. To walk along that vast soft terrace
on a July evening is to enjoy one of the most
delightful scenes in England. Forests of fir
rise overhead like cloud on cloud; through
openings of these there peeps the purple
moorland stretching far southward to the
Roman Camp, and barrows from which spears
and skulls are dug continually. Whatever
may be underground, it is all soft and bright
above, with heath and wild flowers, about
which a breeze will linger in the hottest noon.
Down to the sand road the breeze does not
come; there we may walk in calm, and only
see that it is quivering among the topmost
trees. From the camp the Atlantic can be
seen, but from the sand road the view is more
limited, though many a bay and headland far
beneath show where the ocean of a past age
rolled. Fossils and shells are almost as
plentiful within the cliff as the scythe-stone itself,
and wondrous bones of extinct animals are
often brought to light.

All day long, summer and winter, in the
sombre fir-groves may be heard the stroke of
the spade and the click of the hammer; a
hundred men are at work like bees upon the
cliff, each in his own cell of the great honeycomb,
his private passage. The right to dig
in his own burrow each ot these men has
purchased for a trifling sum, and he toils in it
daily. Though it is a narrow space, in which
he is not able to stand upright, and can
scarcely turn,—though the air in it that he
breathes is damp and deadly,—though the
colour in his cheek is commonly the hectic of
consumption, and he has a cough that never
leaves him night or day,—though he will
himself remark that he does not know amongst
his neighbours one old man,—and though, all
marrying early, few ever see a father with his
grown-up son, yet, for all this, the scythe-stone
cutter works in his accustomed way, and lives
his short life merrily, that is to say, he drinks
down any sense or care that he might have.
These poor men are almost without exception
sickly drunkards. The women of this
community are not much healthier. It is their
task to cut and shape the rough-hewn stone
into those pieces wherewith "the mower
whets his scythe." The thin particles of dust
that escape during this process are very
pernicious to the lungs; but, as usual, it is found
impossible to help the ignorant sufferers by
anything in the form of an idea from without;
a number of masks and respirators have been
more than once provided for them by the
charity of the neighbouring gentry, but
scarcely one woman has given them her
countenance.

The short life of the scythe-stone cutter is
also always liable to be abruptly ended.
Safety requires that fir poles from the
neighbouring wood should be driven in one by one
on either side of him, and a third flat stake
be laid across to make the walls and roof
safe, as the digger pushes his long burrow
forward. Cheap as these fir poles are, they
are too often dispensed with. There is
scarcely one of the hundred mined entrances
of disused caverns here to be seen, through
which some crushed or suffocated workman
has not been brought out dead. The case
is common. A man cannot pay the trifle that
is necessary to buy fir poles for the support of
his cell walls; the consequence is, that sooner
or later, it must almost inevitably happen that
one stroke of the pickaxe shall produce a fall
of sand behind him, and set an impassable
barrier between him and the world without.
It will then be to little purpose that another
may be working near him prompt to give the
alarm and get assistance; tons upon tons of
heavy sand divide the victim from the
rescuers, and they must prop and roof their
way at every step, lest they too perish. Such
accidents are therefore mostly fatal; if the
man was not at once crushed by a fall of sand
upon him, he has been cut off from the outer
air, and suffocated in his narrow worm-hole.
Whiteknights is a small village at the foot of
this cliff, inhabited almost entirely by persons
following this scythe-stone trade. The few
agricultural labourers there to be met with
may be distinguished at a glance from their
brethren of the pits; the bronzed cheeks from
the hectic, the muscular frames from the
bodies which disease has weakened, and which
dissipation helps to a more swift decay. The
cottages are not ill built, and generally stand
detached in a small garden; their little porches
may be seen of an evening thronged with dirty
pretty children, helping father outside his
cavern by carrying the stone away in little
baskets, as he brings it out to them.

Beside the Lutarivulet, which has pleasanter
nooks, more flowery banks, and falls more
musical than any stream in Devon; beside
this brook, and parted by a little wood of
beeches and wild laurel from the village, is a
very pearl of cottages. Honeysuckle, red
rose, and sweet briar hold it entangled in a
fragrant network; they fall over the little
windows, making twilight at midnoon, yet
nobody has ever thought of cutting them
away or tying up a single tendril.
Grandfather Markham and his daughter Alice, with
John Drewit, her husband and master of the
house, used to live there, and they had three
little children, Jane, Henry, and Joe.

A little room over the porch was especially
neat. It was the best room in the cottage,
and therein was lodged old Markham, who