IN THE ABBOT’S BEEF-GARDEN 119 
and beauty alone. But don’t you think it is a still 
finer thing to teach poor people how they may win 
from the common hillside plenty of rich, nourishing 
food at almost no cost at all? And that is what 
we are doing here. Modern bee-science, it is true, 
gives us only an ugly utilitarian hive. It sweeps 
away all the bright, iridescent cobwebs in the: path 
of bee-keeping, and substitutes hard fact for pretty 
fairy-tale. But the sum of it all is that the poor 
cottager gains, not twenty or thirty pounds at most 
of coarse, unsaleable sweet food from his hives, 
but perhaps hundredweights of pure, choice, 
section-honey, which, sold in the proper market, 
will clothe his children comfortably, and make it 
possible for them to lead decent human lives.” 
