THEN AND NOW 91 



Why should it be recorded that Cadmus invented 

 letters ? Why should we inquire who first made 

 gunpowder and glass ? Why should every school- 

 boy be taught that Watt was the inventor of the 

 steam engine ? Can any of these be put in the 

 scale, as benefactors of our race, with the man who 

 first trained a horse to carry him on its back, or 

 drew milk with his hands from the udders of a cow ? 

 The familiarity of the thing has made us callous to 

 the wonder of it. Let us put it before us, like a 

 painting or a statue, and have a good look at it. 



There is a farmhouse, any common farmhouse, 

 just one of the molecules that constitute the mass 

 of our wholesome country life. A horse is being 

 harnessed for the plough : its ancestors sniffed the 

 wind on the steppes of Tartary. Meek cows are 

 standing to be milked : when primitive man first 

 knew them in their native forests he used to give 

 them a wide berth, for his flint arrows fell harmless 

 off their tough hides, and they were fierce exceedingly. 

 A cock is crowing on the fence as if the whole farm 

 belonged to himself : he ought to be skulking in an 

 Indian jungle. The sheep have no business here : 

 their place is on the rocky mountains of Asia. As 

 for the dog, it is difficult to assign it a country, for 

 it owns no wild kindred in any part of the world, 

 but it ought at least to be worrying the sheep. If 

 there is an ass, it is a native of Abyssinia, and the 

 Turkeys are Americans. The cat derives its descent 

 from an Egyptian. 



