You do not go through Egypt without comparing the village Achmed, who is so often at your side, with poor Hodge, whom you left at home, but who, nevertheless, is often in your thoughts. You ask which of the two is better off; and which is, after all, the better man? And you ask yourself these questions not without some misgivings, for you are pleased with Achmed, and now that you are free from work and care, and with the glorious world unfolding itself before you, you are disposed, when you are reminded of him, to feel more pity than usual for poor Hodge.
They both work alike on the land all their days. The former for the Khedivé, the latter for farmer Giles. Each of them is at the bottom of the social hierarchy to which he belongs. These, however, are points of resemblance only in words: the things the words stand for in the two cases are very different. In fact, there are no resemblances at all between them.
It is now winter. Hodge turned out this morning long before daylight. The ground was hard frozen; but by-and-by it will all be snow-slush. He had to look after his horses, and get down, before people began to stir, to the town, five or six miles off, for a load of manure. Or, perhaps, he did not get up quite so long before daylight to-day. It would have been of no use, for he is now working in a wet ditch, up to his ankles in mud all day long, facing a hedge bank. This is a job that will take him three or four weeks. It is winter work, in out-of-the-way fields; and no one will pass in sight all day. He will eat his breakfast of bread and cheese, alone, seated on the damp ground, with his back against a tree, on the lea-side; and his dinner of the same viands, in the same place, and with the same company.
And what will he be thinking about all day? He will wish that farmer Giles would only let him have one of those old pollards on the hedge-bank. He could stay and grub it up after work of moonlight nights. It would give a little firing, and his missus would be glad to see it come home. Things are getting unneighbourly dear, and he will hope that farmer Giles will raise his wages a shilling, or even sixpence a week. But he has heard talk of lowering wages. Times are very hard, and folk must live. He will hope that baby will soon be better; but it always was a poor scrinchling. He will hope his wife may not be laid up this winter, as she was last. That was a bad job. He got behind at the mill then. Tom and Dick have been without shoes ever since, and he can’t say how the doctor’s bill is ever to be paid. He will wish he could buy a little malt to brew a little beer. He shouldn’t make it over-strong. He doesn’t hold with that. He will think it can’t be far off six o’clock. He will wish they had not done away with the old path across Crab-tree Field. It used to save him many a step, going and coming. He minds that field well, because when he was scaring crows in that field—he must have been going eight years old then—the parson came along the path, and he asked the parson, ‘Please, sir, what’s o’clock?’ and the parson gave him sixpence. It was the first sixpence he ever got, and it was a long time before he got another. He always says the parson gave him that sixpence, because when the parson said, ‘What, boy, have you pawned your watch?’ he kind of laughed. He minds, too, that the corn came up very slow that year. It was cold times. Perhaps that was why he asked, What’s o’clock?
Poor fellow, in his life there is plenty of margin for wishes and hopes. As he trudges home you see that his features are weather-beaten and hard. It would not be easy to get a smile out of them; and, if it did come, it would be rather grim. His back is bent; his gait is slouchy; his joints are beginning to stiffen from work and rheumatism.
His life is dreary and hard, and so is his wife’s. She, too, is up before daylight; and her candle is alight some time after he has laid down his weary limbs, and sleep has brought him forgetfulness. She has some odd things to do which must be done, and which she had no spare minutes for during the day. She is now seated for the first time since five o’clock in the morning, with the exception of the short intervals when she snatched her humble meals. She has, unassisted, to do everything that is done in that house, and for that family of six or seven in all. She has to keep the house, the children, and her husband tidy. She has a weekly wash, daily repairs, daily cooking, weekly baking; to buy all that is wanted; to look after the sick baby, and the other children; and to look in occasionally on her sick neighbour.
The earth is a large place, but I believe that nowhere else on the earth’s surface can a harder-worked couple be found than Hodge and his wife.
And what makes their hard lot still harder is the fact that they are the only workers who never have a fête or a holiday. Our climate is such that neither in mid-winter, nor in mid-summer, need labour be intermitted; and our agriculture is so conducted that it cannot. The consequence is that Hodge is held to labour all the year round. And, if he could now and then be spared, nature here imposes upon him so many wants, and so inexorably exacts attention to them, that he could not afford a day’s idleness from the time when, being about eight years old, he began to scare crows, till the day when, worn out with toil and weather, he will be laid in the churchyard: he must be in harness every day, and all day long.
If, then, this couple have some failings (how could it be otherwise?) be to those unavoidable failings a little kind. Think, too, that it would be strange if such a life did not engender some virtues, and to those virtues be fair and appreciative. They are not afraid of any kind, or of any amount, of work. They don’t see much use in complaining. They let other folk alone. They are self-reliant within their narrow sphere. They think there must be a better world than this has been to them. In the meantime they are thankful that they can work, and earn their own, and their children’s, bread.
And here we have the true nursery of the nation. The schooling is hard, but without it we should not be what we are. It forms the stuff out of which Englishmen are made. It is the stuff that has made America and Australia, and is giving to our language and race predominance in the world. Our mental and bodily fibre is strengthened by having had to pass through the Hodge stage.
And now we have to set Achmed by the side of Hodge. Poor Hodge! How can there be any comparison between things so dissimilar? Achmed is a child of the sun, that sun his forefathers worshipped, and whose symbol he sees on the old temples. Every day of his life, and all day long, he has seen him,
pouring floods of light and gladness about him, as he pours floods of life into his veins. The sunshine without has created a kind of sunshine within. It has saved him from working in slushy snow, and in wet ditches, and from all unpleasant skyey influences. It has given him plenty of fête-days and holidays. It has made his muscles springy, his joints supple, his step light, his eye and wits and tongue quick. As to the rest, he might almost think that he had no master over him. He works when and how he pleases. Still he is not without his troubles. The Khedivé, and his people, will take all that his land produces, except the doura, the maize, the cucumbers, and the onions that will be barely sufficient to keep himself and his family alive. All the wheat and the beans must go. And he will get bastinadoed into the bargain. But about that he doesn’t trouble himself much. It always was so, and always will be so. Besides, is it not Allah’s will? After all his wants are not great. He scarcely requires house, fuel, or clothing. And to-day Achmed’s donkey has been hired by the howaji, from whom he hopes to extort two rupees. Two piastres would be plenty, but he wants the rupees particularly just now, for he has a scheme for divorcing his present wife, as she is getting rather old for him, and marrying a young girl he knows of in the village; and this, one way or another, will cost him two or three pounds. And so he is more smiling, and more attentive to the howaji, than usual.
There is however, one point of resemblance: they both end the day in the same fashion. They light their pipes, and take their kêf. Achmed, at these times, appears to be breathing a purer and less earthly ether than Hodge; but that is his manner. It may be that his thoughts are less of the grosser things of earth, the first wants of life, than Hodge’s. But who knows? Perhaps they may be only of divorcing the old wife, and fetching home the young one. Hodge, I believe, has the greater sense of enjoyment as the soothing narcotic permeates his hard overstrained fibres. Sometimes there is a half-formed thought in his mind that he is doing his duty manfully, without much earthly notice or encouragement.
On the whole, then, I am glad to have made the acquaintance of Achmed. I like him well. I shall always have agreeable recollections of him. He is pleasant to look at; pleasant to deal with, notwithstanding his extortions; pleasant to think about. But I have more respect for Hodge. He has nothing to say for himself. If he is picturesque, it is not after the received fashion. If his life contains a poem, it is not one that would be appreciated, generally, either in the Eastern, or the Western, Row. He has, however, a stout, and withal a good heart. One ought to be the better for knowing something of his unobtrusive manly virtues. Achmed has a gust for pleasure, in which matter he has had some training. He is a merry fellow who will enliven your holiday. Hodge’s spiriting lies in a different direction.