Not so. They are all busy enough elsewhere. There is plenty of other work to be done, thank God; and wholesomer and easier work than mowing with a burning sun on their backs, drinking gallons of beer, and getting first hot and then cold across the loins, till they lay in a store of lumbago and sciatica, to cripple them in their old age. You delight in machinery because it is curious: you should delight in it besides because it does good, and nothing but good, where it is used, according to the laws of Lady Why, with care, moderation, and mercy, and fair-play between man and man. For example: just as the mowing-machine saves the mowers, the threshing-machine saves the threshers from rheumatism and chest complaints,—which they used to catch in the draught and dust of the unhealthiest place in the whole parish, which is, the old-fashioned barn’s floor. And so, we may hope, in future years all heavy drudgery and dirty work will be done more and more by machines, and people will have more and more chance of keeping themselves clean and healthy, and more and more time to read, and learn, and think, and be true civilised men and women, instead of being mere live ploughs, or live manure-carts, such as I have seen ere now.
A live manure-cart?
Yes, child. If you had seen, as I have seen, in foreign lands, poor women, haggard, dirty, grown old before their youth was over, toiling up hill with baskets of foul manure upon their backs, you would have said, as I have said, “Oh for Madam How to cure that ignorance! Oh for Lady Why to cure that barbarism! Oh that Madam How would teach them that machinery must always be cheaper in the long run than human muscles and nerves! Oh that Lady Why would teach them that a woman is the most precious thing on earth, and that if she be turned into a beast of burden, Lady Why—and Madam How likewise—will surely avenge the wrongs of their human sister!” There, you do not quite know what I mean, and I do not care that you should. It is good for little folk that big folk should now and then “talk over their heads,” as the saying is, and make them feel how ignorant they are, and how many solemn and earnest questions there are in the world on which they must make up their minds some day, though not yet. But now we will talk about the hay: or rather do you and the rest go and play in the hay and gather it up, build forts of it, storm them, pull them down, build them up again, shout, laugh, and scream till you are hot and tired. You will please Madam How thereby, and Lady Why likewise.
How?
Because Madam How naturally wants her work to succeed, and she is at work now making you.
Making me?
Of course. Making a man of you, out of a boy. And that can only be done by the life-blood which runs through and through you. And the more you laugh and shout, the more pure air will pass into your blood, and make it red and healthy; and the more you romp and play—unless you overtire yourself—the quicker will that blood flow through all your limbs, to make bone and muscle, and help you to grow into a man.
But why does Lady Why like to see us play?
She likes to see you happy, as she likes to see the trees and birds happy. For she knows well that there is no food, nor medicine either, like happiness. If people are not happy enough, they are often tempted to do many wrong deeds, and to think many wrong thoughts: and if by God’s grace they know the laws of Lady Why, and keep from sin, still unhappiness, if it goes on too long, wears them out, body and mind; and they grow ill and die, of broken hearts, and broken brains, my child; and so at last, poor souls, find “Rest beneath the Cross.”
Children, too, who are unhappy; children who are bullied, and frightened, and kept dull and silent, never thrive. Their bodies do not thrive; for they grow up weak. Their minds do not thrive; for they grow up dull. Their souls do not thrive; for they learn mean, sly, slavish ways, which God forbid you should ever learn. Well said the wise man, “The human plant, like the vegetables, can only flower in sunshine.”