How, then, is the dairyman to succeed when he cannot, positively cannot,
make cheese to sell at less than fourpence per pound wholesale? Of course
such instances are exceptional, but American cheese is usually sold a
penny or more a pound below the English ordinary, and this cuts the ground
from under the dairyman's feet; and the American cheese too is acquiring a
reputation for richness, and, price for price, surpasses the English in
quality. Some people who have long cherished a prejudice against the
American have found, upon at last being induced to try the two, that the
Canadian cheddar is actually superior to the English cheddar, the English
selling at tenpence per pound and the Canadian at sevenpence.

Mr. George finds he pays a very high rent for his grass land--some 50_s_.
per acre--and upon reckoning up the figures in his account-books heaves a
sigh. His neighbours perchance may be making fortunes, though they tell
quite a different tale, but he feels that he is not growing rich. The work
is hard, or rather it is continuous. No one has to attend to his duties so
regularly all the year round as the man who looks after cows. They cannot
be left a single day from the 1st of January to the 31st of December. Nor
is the social state of things altogether pleasant to reflect on. His sons
and daughters have all left home; not one would stay and take to the dairy
work. They have gone into the towns, and found more congenial employment
there. He is himself growing in years. His wife, having once left off
making cheese when the milk selling commenced, and having tasted the
sweets of rest, is unwilling to return to that hard labour. When it is
done he must pay some one to do it.

In every way ready money is going out of the house. Cash to pay the
haymakers idling about in the sheds out of the rain; cash to pay the men
who manage the milk; cash to pay the woman who makes the cheese out of the
surplus milk; cash to pay the blacksmith for continually re-shoeing the