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Show FIFE COALMINERS 1 Are Religious, Devoted to Their Homes and Families. , Husbands Take Pride In Seeing Their Wives Well Dressed Accident Will Cause Entire Town to Mourn. t Broughty Ferry, Scotland. Having a relative engaged In one of the pits nt Bowhill, a busy mining district, the i Writer has been privileged to learn by living among them much of the daily life of the Fife minor. Taking tiie first shift, the miner leaves home in time to reach his work at six o'clock. He does not return till he knocks off at two. The wife of the miner has a long day to get her household duties attended at-tended to. She is not an early riser, and getting the children off to school occupies her morning to the full. They pop into each other's houses at any time and are dcrx-ndent on each other oth-er in cases of sickness. A washerwoman washer-woman is difficult to obtain. Wages are good, and the miner does not care to see his wife going out to work. The husbands take great pride in seeing their wives stylishly dressed, and it is a sight to see them out for church on a Sunday. The women will send far to get their millinery up to date. Their taste is good on the whole, though It l. is largely Initiative. f The houses are built in rows, and in the end house perhaps a clerk or overseer has his abode; his wife is usually from the city and has smart tastes. She is closely watched, and whatever she gets new to wear is generally gen-erally what is worn by the whole row in a few weeks. Miners' families are adepts at banking bank-ing up a fire to last all night, so that "father" has only to give it a poke in the morning, and mother gets up to a warm fire and a big kettle of boiliLg water to make the first cup of tea. They are deeply religious, nearly all churchgoers, at least once a day. Kind ,W hearted and fond of their families Jl no better clpss op jnn xitZ- among" woi-idng" people anywhere. . If they demand de-mand good wages hey sorely earn them. Accidents are of frequent occurrence. occur-rence. A miner's wife told me that" 59k. 1 J S paw ht irJ s , Type of Miners' Homes. " i her mind was never at rest. "You never know when your man will be carried to the door crushed in some way," she said. One Sunday I went to church at A.uchterderran. There had been an accident ac-cident shortly before, when two men lost their lives. I was an utter stranger but I shook with sobs at tbe feeling 'way the minister prayed for sorrowing families of the victims. An unusual chord was struck as he also prayed for divine blessing on tho "kindly hands that had washed the faces of the dead before the relatives looked on them." |