"'The thought recurs that education--cultivated thought--can best be
combined with agricultural labor, on the principle of thorough work;
that careless, half-performed, slovenly work makes no place for such
combination; and thorough work, again, renders sufficient the
smallest quantity of ground to each man; and this, again, conforms
to what must occur in a world less inclined to wars and more devoted
to the arts of peace than heretofore. Population must increase
rapidly, more rapidly than in former times, and ere long the most
valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving a comfortable
subsistence from the smallest area of soil. No community whose every
member possesses this art, can ever be the victim of oppression in
any of its forms. Such community will be alike independent of
crowned kings, money kings, and land kings.'"






CHAPTER IV

LIFE'S CHOICE





PERCY read these words as though they were his own; and perhaps we
may say they were his own, for, as Emerson says: "Thought is the