156 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



empire of Rome split into many pieces. It has long 

 been foreseen that if ever England is occupied with a 

 great war the question of our corn supply, so largely 

 derived from abroad, will become a weighty matter. 

 Happy for us that we have wheat-growing colonies ! As 

 persons, each of us, in our voluntary or involuntary 

 struggle for money, is really striving for those little 

 grains of wheat that lie so lightly in the palm of the 

 hand. Corn is coin and coin is corn, and whether it be 

 a labourer in the field, who no sooner receives his weekly 

 wage than he exchanges it for bread, or whether it be 

 the financier in Lombard Street who loans millions, the 

 object is really the same wheat. All ends in the same : 

 iron mines, coal mines, factories, furnaces, the counter, 

 the desk no one can live on iron, or coal, or cotton 

 the object is really sacks of wheat. Therefore to the 

 eye of the mind they are not sacks of wheat, but filled 

 to the brim, like those in the magic caves of the ' Arabian 

 Nights,' with gold. 



