Ah, there is a proof to us of what men may do if they will only learn the lessons which Madam How can teach them.  There is that boy, fresh from the National School, cutting more grass in a day than six strong mowers could have cut, and cutting it better, too; for the mowing-machine goes so much nearer to the ground than the scythe, that we gain by it two hundredweight of hay on every acre.  And see, too, how persevering old Madam How will not stop her work, though the machine has cut off all the grass which she has been making for the last three months; for as fast as we shear it off, she makes it grow again.  There are fresh blades, here at our feet, a full inch long, which have sprung up in the last two days, for the cattle when they are turned in next week.

But if the machine cuts all the grass, the poor mowers will have nothing to do.

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