he could get in the purchase of the most expensive kinds of employment, while she and the children were compelled to content themselves with such cheap and coarse activity as dragging an old wagon round and round in a small field which a kind-hearted neighbor permitted them to use for the purpose.  I afterward saw this improvident husband and unnatural father.  He had just squandered all the money he had been able to beg or borrow in buying six tickets, which entitled the holder to that many days’ employment in pitching hay into a barn.  A week later I met him again.  He was broken in health, his limbs trembled, his walk was an uncertain shuffle.  Clearly he was suffering from overwork.  As I paused by the wayside to speak to him a wagon loaded with hay was passing.  He fixed his eyes upon it with a hungry, wolfish glare, clutched a pitchfork and leaned eagerly forward, watching the vanishing wagon with breathless attention and heedless of my salutation.  That night he was arrested, streaming with perspiration, in the unlawful act of unloading that hay and putting it into its owner’s barn.  He was tried, convicted and sentenced to six months’ detention in the House of Indolence.

The whole country is infested by a class of criminal vagrants known as strambaltis, or, as we should say, “tramps.”  These persons prowl about among the farms and villages begging for work in the name of charity.  Sometimes they travel in groups, as many as a dozen together, and then the farmer dares not refuse them; and before he can notify the constabulary they will have performed a great deal of the most useful labor that they can find to do and escaped without paying a rylat.  One trustworthy agriculturist assured me that his losses in one year from these depredations amounted to no less a sum than seven hundred balukan!  On nearly all the larger and more isolated farms a strong force of guards is maintained during the greater part of the year to prevent these outrages, but they are frequently overpowered, and sometimes prove unfaithful to their trust by themselves working secretly by night.

The Golampi priesthood has always denounced overwork as a deadly sin, and declared useless and apparently harmless work, such as carrying water from the river and letting it flow in again, a distinct violation of the divine law, in which, however, I could never find any reference to the matter; but there has recently risen a sect which holds that all labor being pleasurable, each kind in its degree is immoral and wicked.  This sect, which embraces many of the most holy and learned men, is rapidly spreading and becoming a power in the state.  It has, of course, no churches, for these cannot be built without labor, and its members commonly dwell in caves and live upon such roots and berries as can be easily gathered, of which the country produces a great abundance though all are exceedingly unpalatable.  These Gropoppsu (as the members of this sect call themselves) pass most of their waking hours sitting in the sunshine with folded hands, contemplating their navels; by the practice of which austerity they hope to obtain as reward an eternity of hard labor after death.