Then why do they not grow?

Think.

Is there any difference in the soil inside and out?

A very good guess.  But guesses are no use without facts.  Look.

Oh, I remember now.  I know now the soil of the field is brown, like the garden; and the soil of the moor all black and peaty.

Yes.  But if you dig down two or three feet, you will find the soils of the moor and the field just the same.  So perhaps the top soils were once both alike.

I know.

Well, and what do you think about it now?  I want you to look and think.  I want every one to look and think.  Half the misery in the world comes first from not looking, and then from not thinking.  And I do not want you to be miserable.

But shall I be miserable if I do not find out such little things as this.

You will be miserable if you do not learn to understand little things:  because then you will not be able to understand great things when you meet them.  Children who are not trained to use their eyes and their common sense grow up the more miserable the cleverer they are.

Why?

Because they grow up what men call dreamers, and bigots, and fanatics, causing misery to themselves and to all who deal with them.  So I say again, think.

Well, I suppose men must have altered the soil inside the bank.

Well done.  But why do you think so?

Because, of course, some one made the bank; and the brown soil only goes up to it.

Well, that is something like common sense.  Now you will not say any more, as the cows or the butterflies might, that the hay-field was always there.

And how did men change the soil?

By tilling it with the plough, to sweeten it, and manuring it, to make it rich.

And then did all these beautiful grasses grow up of themselves?

You ought to know that they most likely did not.  You know the new enclosures?

Yes.

Well then, do rich grasses come up on them, now that they are broken up?

Oh no, nothing but groundsel, and a few weeds.

Just what, I dare say, came up here at first.  But this land was tilled for corn, for hundreds of years, I believe.  And just about one hundred years ago it was laid down in grass; that is, sown with grass seeds.

And where did men get the grass seeds from?

Ah, that is a long story; and one that shows our forefathers (though they knew nothing about railroads or electricity) were not such simpletons as some folks think.  The way it must have been done was this.  Men watched the natural pastures where cattle get fat on the wild grass, as they do in the Fens, and many other parts of England.  And then they saved the seeds of those fattening wild grasses, and sowed them in fresh spots.  Often they made mistakes.  They were careless, and got weeds among the seed—­like