THE CHILD WANDERS IN THE WOOD. 305 



" 'Of course, we know that the greatest part 

 of your people cannot help themselves, and 

 must labour on like the reapers till their ears 

 are full of the dust of age. That only makes 

 us more sorrowful, and anxious that things 

 should be different. I do not suppose we 

 should think about them had we not been 

 in man's hand so long that now we have got 

 to feel with man. Every year makes it more 

 pitiful, because then there are more flowers 

 gone, and added to the vast numbers of those 

 gone before 3 and never gathered, or looked at, 

 though they could have given so much pleasure, 

 And all the work and labour, and thinking, 

 and reading, and learning that your people do 

 ends in nothing not even one flower. We 

 cannot understand why it should be so. There 

 are thousands of wheat-ears in this field, more 

 than you would know how to write down with 

 your pencil, though you have learned your 

 tables, sir. Yet all of us thinking, and talk- 

 ing, cannot understand why it is when we 

 consider how clever your people are, and how 

 they bring ploughs, and steam-engines, and 

 put up wires along the roads to tell you things 



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