THE CHILD WANDERS IN THE WOOD. 307 



and think more as we do. It is not because 

 your people have not got plenty to eat and 

 drink you have as much as the bees. Why, 

 just look at us! Look at the wheat that 

 grows all over the world ; all the figures that 

 were ever written in pencil could not tell how 

 much, it is such an immense quantity. Yet 

 your people starve and die of hunger every 

 now and then, and we have seen the wretched 

 beggars tramping along the road. We have 

 known of times when there was a great pile 

 of us, almost a hill piled up; it was not in this 

 country, it was in another warmer country, 

 and yet no one dared to touch it they died 

 at the bottom of the hill of wheat. The earth 

 is full of skeletons of people who have died of 

 hunger. They are dying now this minute in 

 your big cities, with nothing but stones all 

 round them, stone walls and stone streets; 

 not jolly stones like those you threw in the 

 water, dear hard, unkind stones that make 

 them cold and let them die, while we are grow- 

 ing here, millions of us, in the sunshine with 

 the butterflies floating over us. This makes us 

 unhappy ; I was very unhappy this morning 



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