O.I0 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



J 



feeling of brotherhood, of mutual interest and mutual 

 helpfulness, by which not only the locality has its inmates 

 and the entire country, but, it may be said, all humanity 

 come to be benefited. In these societies high and low mix, 

 but mix as equals, There are no distinctions. Knowledge 

 will tell, position will tell, experience will tell, judgment 

 will tell, effort will tell, above all things character will 

 tell. There will be leaders and led. But there is no pre- 

 tension to superiority, no material giving and taking. And 

 that it is which has made these modest little societies such 

 fruitful generators of economic, social and moral good, 

 drawing members together as by bonds of common kinship. 

 The sense of distance has come to be banished, without 

 the humbler abusing the right of equahty accorded to them. 

 They have been educated by the new spirit actually infused. 

 And these societies — in the shape of which Indian philan- 

 thropists, as observed, hope to revive their valued lost heri- 

 tage of the " Village Community " — have certainly succeeded 

 in keeping small folk, including labourers, in the village. 

 It is on such lines that our Village Clubs and other social 

 institutions for rural districts want to be developed. 



The continuous flow of emigration seems to tell us that 

 the man who goes to seek a new home, to make it for himself, 

 in unknown parts of the world, would require little persuasion 

 to stay in his village, in which he has grown up and has 

 friends, in a locality in which he knows every shrub and 

 every footpath, and to which all his memories are attached, 

 if we could only rival the attractions of those distant lands 

 by offering equivalent benefits. But he wants something 

 to give zest and colour and heart-warmth to his life. The 

 home of his own — maybe an idyllic, picturesque cottage 

 like those over the sight of which Southey grew rapturous, 

 with a garden by it exciting such sentiments as those which 

 the late Poet Laureate owned to in " The Garden that I 

 Love," with a happy and contented family to share the 

 home with him, working, or else playing, in the garden, 

 training the creepers up the treUis v/all, tending the flowers, 

 keeping the rooms with their familiar furniture and orna- 

 ments tidy, and bright with flowers culled from the garden 



