THE PURSUIT OF IDEALS. 21 



manifestation would be apparent in the background of a 

 thought or the turn of an expression. 



On a different plane the following passage from a paper 

 by Mr. Castell Wrey, entitled " Suspicion," sets an ideal : 



For a moment I want to take you away from suspicion, and 

 want you to imagine a youth walking down a street at about 

 9 o'clock, about to enter for the first time a business office, a 

 bank. He is shown where to hang his hat and coat, and is 

 then told that he is to be trusted with such and such work and 

 trusted as a servant of the bank to do his duty in return for the 

 salary to be paid to him. He starts with confidence because 

 he has been told that he is trusted. I will not labour the 

 question of his ultimate promotion, but all through his career 

 he sees trust and confidence around him. There is confidence 

 right through the institution, from the managing director to 

 the newest office boy, and to the clients of the bank. 



Why should not agriculture, the best, cleanest and healthiest 

 of businesses, be run on similar lines of confidence and trust ? 

 Why should banks, a much later institution than agriculture, 

 if the oldest book be the test, be run on different lines ? For 

 the Bible practically starts with the Garden of Eden, a form of 

 small holding and fruit cultivation, and therefore a part of 

 agriculture. 



Frequently in the course of discussion a speaker would, 

 more or less unconsciously, reveal the hopes and aspirations 

 which lay in the background of his thoughts. Roseate 

 visions were seen of a time when Agriculture should be 

 again recognised by the whole people as the foundation 

 of the structure of national life, when all the occupiers of 

 land should be prosperous and all the workers happy and 

 contented. Those golden ages of poetic fancy 



"Ere England's griefs began, 

 When every rood of ground maintain'd its man," 



or when 



"None was for a party, 

 Then all were for the State," 



were recalled. The touch of hard fact might chill the 

 ardour of those who were addicted to poetry. The cold- 

 blooded statistician might cavil at Goldsmith's calculation 

 and point out that a quarter of an acre is a meagre allowance 



