111. As to the _use_ of _milk_ and of that which proceeds from milk, in a family, very little need be said. At a certain age bread and milk are _all_ that a child wants. At a later age they furnish one meal a day for children. Milk is, at all seasons, good to _drink_. In the making of puddings, and in the making of _bread_ too, how useful is it! Let any one who has eaten none but baker's bread for a good while, taste bread home-baked, mixed with milk instead of with water; and he will find what the difference is. There is this only to be observed, that in _hot weather_, bread mixed with milk will not _keep so long_ as that mixed with water. It will of course turn _sour_ sooner.
112. Whether the milk of a cow be to be consumed by a cottage family in the shape of milk, or whether it be to be made to yield butter, skim-milk, and buttermilk, must depend on circumstances. A woman that has no child, or only one, would, perhaps, find it best to make _some butter_ at any rate. Besides, skim-milk and bread (the milk being boiled) is quite strong food enough for any children's breakfast, even when they begin to go to work; a fact which I state upon the most ample and satisfactory experience, very seldom having ever had any other sort of breakfast myself till I was more than ten years old, and I was in the fields at work full four years before that. I will here mention that it gave me singular pleasure to see a boy, just turned of _six_, helping his father to _reap_, in Sussex, this last summer. He did little, to be sure; but it was _something_. His father set him into the ridge at a great distance before him; and when he came up to the place, he found a _sheaf_ cut; and, those who know what it is to reap, know how pleasant it is to find now and then a sheaf cut ready to their hand. It was no small thing to see a boy fit to be trusted with so dangerous a thing as a reap-hook in his hands, at an age when "young masters" have nursery-maids to cut their victuals for them, and to see that they do not fall out of the window, tumble down stairs, or run under carriage-wheels or horses' bellies. Was not this father discharging his duty by this boy much better than he would have been by sending him to a place called a _school_? The boy is in a school here; and an excellent school too: the school of useful labour. I must hear a great deal more than I ever have heard, to convince me, that teaching children to _read_ tends so much to their happiness, their independence of spirit, their manliness of character, as teaching them to _reap_. The creature that is in _want_ must be a _slave_; and to be habituated _to labour cheerfully_ is the only means of preventing nineteen-twentieths of mankind from being in want. I have digressed here; but observations of this sort can, in my opinion, never be too often repeated; especially at a time when all sorts of mad projects are on foot, for what is falsely called _educating_ the people, and when some would do this by a _tax_ that would compel the single man to give part of his earnings to teach the married man's children to read and write.