Children Who Have
Suffered From Whooping-Cough Are Often Sent Out With The Hop-Pickers;
They Play About On The Bare Ground In The Most Careless Manner, And Yet
Recover.
Air and hops are wonderful restoratives.
After passing an
afternoon with the drier in the kiln, seated close to a great heap of
hops and inhaling the odour, I was in a condition of agreeable excitement
all the evening. My mind was full of fancy, imagination, flowing with
ideas; a sense of lightness and joyousness lifted me up. I wanted music,
and felt full of laughter. Like the half-fabled haschish, the golden
bloom of the hops had entered the nervous system; intoxication without
wine, without injurious after-effect, dream intoxication; they were wine
for the nerves. If hops only grew in the Far East we should think wonders
of so powerful a plant. At hop-picking a girl can earn about 10 - s - . a
week, so that it is not such a highly paid employment as might be
supposed from the talk there is about it. The advantages are sideways, so
to say; a whole family can work at the same time, and the sum-total
becomes considerable. Hopping happily comes on just after corn harvest,
so that the labourers get two harvest-times. The farmers find it an
expensive crop. It costs 50 - l - . or 60 - l - . to pick a very small garden,
and if the Egyptian plague of insects has prevailed the price at market
will not repay the expenditure.
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