Journal of a peasant of the nineteenth century

August 24, 1860

The truth that I have not written much, but today I needed it.
It has been a sad day, my mother's brother has died at 36 years of age. She has left my aunt alone with her ten children, that's why we went to visit her, we had not seen her for years because of work, but now she needs a lot of help, she took care of the house and her younger children.

When we arrived, I was distressed and now more than we are in a time of famine because of the bad harvest.
What am I going to do now? I will have to send my children of 8 and 9 years to work or we will not be able to survive, those were his words as soon as he saw us, he did not talk much, he just cried and cried.
We would love to help you but we can barely support ourselves, some of us are already going hungry.

In these times families are all numerous, but life expectancy does not exceed forty years because of epidemics and wars.