They think they will, they think that when they have toiled, and worked a
long time, almost all their lives, then they will come to the flowers,
and the birds, and be joyful in the sunshine. But no, it will not be so,
for then they will be old themselves, and their ears dull, and their eyes
dim, so that the birds will sound a great distance off, and the flowers
will not seem bright.

"Of course, we know that the greatest part of your people cannot help
themselves, and must labour on like the reapers till their ears are full
of the dust of age. That only makes us more sorrowful, and anxious that
things should be different. I do not suppose we should think about them
had we not been in man's hand so long that now we have got to feel with
man. Every year makes it more pitiful because then there are more flowers
gone, and added to the vast numbers of those gone before, and never
gathered or looked at, though they could have given so much pleasure. And
all the work and labour, and thinking, and reading and learning that your
people do ends in nothing--not even one flower. We cannot understand why
it should be so. There are thousands of wheat-ears in this field, more
than you would know how to write down with your pencil, though you have
learned your tables, sir. Yet all of us thinking, and talking, cannot
understand why it is when we consider how clever your people are, and how
they bring ploughs, and steam-engines, and put up wires along the roads
to tell you things when you are miles away, and sometimes we are sown
where we can hear the hum, hum, all day of the children learning in the
school. The butterflies flutter over us, and the sun shines, and the
doves are very, very happy at their nest, but the children go on hum, hum
inside this house, and learn, learn. So we suppose you must be very
clever, and yet you cannot manage this. All your work is wasted, and you
labour in vain--you dare not leave it a minute.