“Grow? I should think so!” he replied. “We get the back wash of the Gulf Stream down there, and our sheep can graze all winter in the open. Why, I have three trees, real trees, on Stanley Island! I wish you and Mr. Fraser would come and pay me a visit there. My wife and daughters would be so delighted to see you.” Then, turning to my husband, he continued, “Our flocks are getting too big for their feeding-grounds, so I have come to ask the Chilean Government to rent us five hundred thousand acres in Patagonia for a supplementary run. The pasturage is not as good as that in the Falklands, but it will be better than nothing.”
Of course we instantly invited our visitor to dine. An English face was always a joy to look at where one saw so few, and this man brought the very atmosphere of the North Country with him. He told us many interesting details about his little domain, the management of which he took very seriously and evidently accomplished with much success. “Of course I could do more,” he said regretfully, “if it were not for the blind hostility of the Opposition.”
“Does it reach so far?” I asked politely. “I should have thought there was quite enough to keep it busy at home.”
“Oh, I don’t mean the little crowd at Westminster,” he replied indignantly. “Please understand, Mrs. Fraser, that I have an Opposition of my own!”
“I do congratulate you,” I said; “that is certainly a triumph! What Britisher could ask more?”
There is a little plant of which every Englishman carries the seeds about with him. It is called Love-of-the-soil. Give him a bit of land anywhere—the best or the worst, a vast fertile tract or a few miles of desert island; tell him it is his very own to do as he likes with; and before you can turn round every grain of its dust is sprouting with Love-of-the-soil. He sees, knows, loves, only that spot. He will fight for it, work for it, cheat for it if need be, perhaps even slay; for to him it has taken on the sacred character of the mother country; it is his piece of England, and woe to any one who tries to take it away from him! That is why English colonies succeed. And it is the lack of this passion for the land which makes bad colonists of men of other nationalities.
The Americans are simply brutal about their possessions. Out here in the North-west one is horrified at the general callousness. I have watched people making what we should call a home, breaking new land, building a charming house, working hard to make everything within and without as perfect as they know how. A cloud of dust shows up on the road, a motor car full of “land grabbers” kicks and coughs and stinks at the gate; the next minute the hard-eyed hucksters are being shown into all the sacred arena of airy rooms and flowering garden, are fingering, valuing, depreciating; there follows an hour or two of hard bargaining, and then your neighbour’s wife flies across lots to tell you, with shining eyes, “We’ve sold the place!” “Sold the place?” I cry. “Why, I thought it was to be your home!” “What does that matter?” she retorts, huffed. “I got my price! We can easily build another house that we shall like just as much.”
I suppose it is a form of the disease now diagnosed as Americanitis, the feverish restlessness that would rather “trek” anywhere than stay put for more than a year or two. But it is a terrible disqualification for building a State. Since I have seen it at close quarters, I have often thought of the contrast presented by that handful of North Country shepherds and their descendants in the Falklands,[6] so proud of doing their best with the best they could get, pleased with their drizzly climate (it rains two hundred and fifty days in the year) because it is so English, proud of their thriving little community, sending out their pelts and mutton by the once-a-month steamer, actually growing their pelargoniums and fuchsias in the open air, and so furiously interested in their miniature politics that the Government and the Opposition are ready to knock each other forty ways from Sunday every time they meet! Good luck and long life to you, my incorrigible brothers! The secret of success is certainly yours, and it all comes from the little plant called Love-of-the-soil.
CHAPTER VI POPE PIUS IX
After his return from Chile, Father Giovanni Maria Mastai was appointed Director of the Ospizio di San Michele, a position which could not be called a great advancement in the eyes of the world, but which carried with it a most weighty burden of responsibility. Some idea of this charge can be grasped when we explain that the so-called “Hospital” embraced six separate large establishments—namely, an orphanage for boys, another for girls (both containing complete schools for general education as well as for the learning of trades and arts), a home for the aged poor, a “protectory” for unruly boys, a reformatory for fallen women, and a prison for political offenders. The endowments of the Ospizio, together with its earnings, rendered an income of fifty thousand dollars a year, then considered an ample sum for providing for the wants of some thousands of persons. It will readily be understood that this left little or nothing over for salaries to those in charge, but, fortunately, in those days these were not needed, as all the employees, except a few servants, were priests and religious who gave their services for nothing except food and lodging.