SAINT GUIDO. 15 



long time, almost all their lives, then they will come 

 to the flowers, and the birds, and be joyful in the 

 sunshine. But no, it will not be so, for then they will 

 be old themselves, and their ears dull, and their eyes 

 dim, so that the birds will sound a great distance off, 

 and the flowers will not seem bright. 



" 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, 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 talking, can- 

 not 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 when you are miles away, and some- 

 times we are sown where we can hear the hum, hum, 

 all day of the children learning in the school. The 

 butterflies flutter over us, and the sun shines, and 

 the cloves are very, very happy at their nest, but the 





