It Is A Great Nuisance To Come In From A Long Round After
Sheep And Find The Fire Out And
No hot water to make tea, and to have to
set to work immediately to get your men's supper; for
They cannot earn
their supper and cook it at the same time. The difficulty is that good
boys are hard to get, and a man that is worth anything at all will
hardly take to cooking as a profession. Hence it comes to pass that the
cooks are generally indolent and dirty fellows, who don't like hard
work. Your college education, if you have had one, will doubtless have
made you familiar with the art of making bread; you will now proceed to
discover the mysteries of boiling potatoes. The uses of dripping will
begin to dawn upon you, and you will soon become expert in the
manufacture of tallow candles. You will wash your own clothes, and will
learn that you must not boil flannel shirts, and experience will teach
you that you must eschew the promiscuous use of washing soda, tempting
though indeed it be if you are in a hurry. If you use collars, I can
inform you that Glenfield starch is the only starch used in the
laundries of our most gracious Sovereign; I tell you this in confidence,
as it is not generally advertised.
To return to the culinary department. Your natural poetry of palate
will teach you the proper treatment of the onion, and you will ere long
be able to handle that inestimable vegetable with the breadth yet
delicacy which it requires. Many other things you will learn, which for
your sake as well as my own I will not enumerate here. Let the above
suffice for examples.
At first your wethers will run with your ewes, and you will only want
one shepherd; but as soon as the mob gets up to two or three thousand
the wethers should be kept separate; you will then want another
shepherd. As soon as you have secured your run you must buy sheep;
otherwise you lose time, as the run is only valuable for the sheep it
carries. Bring sheep, shepherd, men, stores, all at one and the same
time. Some wethers must be included in your purchase, otherwise you
will run short of meat, as none of your own breeding will be ready for
the knife for a year and a half, to say the least of it. No wether
should be killed till it is two years old, and then it is murder to kill
an animal which brings you in such good interest by its wool, and would
even be better if suffered to live three years longer, when you will
have had its value in its successive fleeces. It will, however, pay you
better to invest nearly all your money in ewes, and to kill your own
young stock, than to sink more capital than is absolutely necessary in
wethers.
Start your dray, then, from town and join it with your sheep on the way
up.
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