such silly things, and to work for them and to look to them as the object
of their lives. It is because you do not share us among you without price
or difference; because you do not share the great earth among you fairly,
without spite and jealousy and avarice; because you will not agree; you
silly, foolish people to let all the flowers wither for a thousand years
while you keep each other at a distance, instead of agreeing and sharing
them! Is there something in you--as there is poison in the nightshade,
you know it, dear, your papa told you not to touch it--is there a sort of
poison in your people that works them up into a hatred of one another?
Why, then, do you not agree and have all things, all the great earth can
give you, just as we have the sunshine and the rain? How happy your
people could be if they would only agree! But you go on teaching even the
little children to follow the same silly objects, hum, hum, hum, all the
day, and they will grow up to hate each other, and to try which can get
the most round things--you have one in your pocket."

"Sixpence," said Guido. "It's quite a new one."

"And other things quite as silly," the Wheat continued. "All the time the
flowers are flowering, but they will go, even the oaks will go. We think
the reason you do not all have plenty, and why you do not do only just a
little work, and why you die of hunger if you leave off, and why so many
of you are unhappy in body and mind, and all the misery is because you
have not got a spirit like the wheat, like us; you will not agree, and
you will not share, and you will hate each other, and you will be so
avaricious, and you will _not_ touch the flowers, or go into the sunshine
(you would rather half of you died among the hard stones first), and you
will teach your children hum, hum, to follow in some foolish course that
has caused you all this unhappiness a thousand years, and you will _not_
have a spirit like us, and feel like us. Till you have a spirit like us,