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. 
