chosen the shepherd's lot as a permanent occupation, but hoped to
speedily finish his college course upon half the proceeds of our
venture. This pastoral enterprise still seems to me to have been
essentially sound, both economically and morally, but perhaps one
partner depended too much upon the impeccability of her motives
and the other found himself too preoccupied with study to know
that it is not a real kindness to bed a sheepfold with straw, for
certainly the venture ended in a spectacle scarcely less harrowing
than the memory it was designed to obliterate. At least the sight
of two hundred sheep with four rotting hoofs each, was not
reassuring to one whose conscience craved economic peace. A
fortunate series of sales of mutton, wool, and farm enabled the
partners to end the enterprise without loss, and they passed on,
one to college and the other to Europe, if not wiser, certainly
sadder for the experience.

It was during this second journey to Europe that I attended a
meeting of the London match girls who were on strike and who met
daily under the leadership of well-known labor men of London. The
low wages that were reported at the meetings, the phossy jaw
which was described and occasionally exhibited, the appearance of
the girls themselves I did not, curiously enough, in any wise
connect with what was called the labor movement, nor did I
understand the efforts of the London trades-unionists, concerning
whom I held the vaguest notions. But of course this impression
of human misery was added to the others which were already making
me so wretched. I think that up to this time I was still filled
with the sense which Wells describes in one of his young
characters, that somewhere in Church or State are a body of
authoritative people who will put things to rights as soon as