One or two of my
men were, I think, members of the Union, but having already obtained
the increased wages there was nothing more to be gained for themselves
by so continuing, and they soon dropped out of the list. Eventually
the organization collapsed. Arch was a labourer himself, and
exceedingly clever at "laying" hedges, or "pleaching," as it is still
called, and was called by Shakespeare in _Much Ado About Nothing_:
"Bid her steal into the pleached bower,
Where honeysuckles, ripen'd by the sun,
Forbid the sun to enter."
Pleaching is a method of reducing and renovating an overgrown hedge by
which all old and exhausted wood is cut out, leaving live vertical
stakes at intervals, and winding the young stuff in and out of them in
basket-making fashion, after notching it at the base to allow of
bending it down without breakage. Arch was a native of Warwickshire,
the home of this art; it takes a skilled man to ensure a good result,
but when well done an excellent hedge is produced after two or three
years' growth. The quickset or whitethorn (May) makes the strongest
and most impervious hedge, and it flourishes amazingly on the stiff
clay soils of the Lias formation in that county and its neighbour
Worcestershire.
I have often wondered at, and admired, the labourer's resignation and
fortitude in adversity; a discontented or surly face is rarely seen
among them; they have, like most people, to live lives of
self-sacrifice, frugality, and industry, which doubtless bring their
own compensation, for the exercise and habit of these very virtues
tend to the cheerfulness and courage which never give up.
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