4 VILLAGE ENGLAND 



above all other communal groups. He used to complain 

 that modern life has so urbanised the modes of thought 

 of this generation that townsmen cannot so much as under 

 stand the value of productive energy. They are con 

 sumers, so thoughtlessly concerned with consumption that 

 they cannot or will not trace the bread back to the grain or 

 feel that the shop is founded on the field. The urbanisa 

 tion often goes even farther than this , The people are con 

 fined to slums of thought, where not even a swallow twits 

 them with the spring. 



The countryman may be in the same case, but he can 

 scarcely at worst escape contact with the essence of things 

 and suck strength of character from touching the earth. 

 A London worker who wished one future day to retire 

 into the country, early in his career bought a plot of 

 country ground and began to plant it with trees. He 

 employed an old country labourer for the work and gave 

 him precise instructions. They were accurately and 

 honestly performed except in one particular. When he 

 next visited the plot, the labourer met him and explained, 

 &quot;You did tell me,&quot; he said,/* to plant the apple-trees 

 here and the walnut-trees there ; but I have planted the 

 walnut-trees here and the apple-trees there. It did seem 

 to me that some day, when you and me was gone, them 

 walnut-trees would shade them apple-trees ; and stop 

 em bearing so well/ There spoke and thought the 

 authentic countryman. He had ruled out self, his own 

 self as well as his employer s. His mind was impersonal, 

 independent of this moment or that. He knew himself 

 as an agent of production ; why not risk the bigger 

 phrase and say a creative artist ? His straight and simple 

 mind hit the same truth as that rather self-conscious tutal 

 philosophet Thoreau, when he said well, but artificially, 

 &quot; You cannot kill time without injuring .eternity/* 



