The butterflies flutter over us, and the sun shines, and the
doves are very, very happy at their nest, but the children go on hum, hum
inside this house, and learn, learn. So we suppose you must be very
clever, and yet you cannot manage this. All your work is wasted, and you
labour in vain--you dare not leave it a minute.
"If you left it a minute it would all be gone; it does not mount up and
make a store, so that all of you could sit by it and be happy. Directly
you leave off you are hungry, and thirsty, and miserable like the beggars
that tramp along the dusty road here. All the thousand years of labour
since this field was first ploughed have not stored up anything for you.
It would not matter about the work so much if you were only happy; the
bees work every year, but they are happy; the doves build a nest every
year, but they are very, very happy. We think it must be because you do
not come out to us and be with us, and think more as we do. It is not
because your people have not got plenty to eat and drink--you have as
much as the bees. Why just look at us! Look at the wheat that grows all
over the world; all the figures that were ever written in pencil could
not tell how much, it is such an immense quantity.
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