is more than probable that something of this kind will really come about.
It would be only simple justice after so many centuries--it takes so many
hundreds of years to get even that.

'Workhouse, indeed!' I have heard the same ancient well-to-do greybeards
ejaculate, 'workhouse! they ought to be very thankful they have got such
a place to go to!'

All the village has been to the wheat-field with reaping-hooks, and
waggons and horses, the whole strength of man has been employed upon it;
little brown hands and large brown hands, blue eyes and dark eyes have
been there searching about; all the intelligence of human beings has been
brought to bear, and yet the stubble is not empty. Down there come again
the ever-increasing clouds of sparrows; as a cloud rises here another
cloud descends beyond it, a very mist and vapour as it were of wings. It
makes one wonder to think where all the nests could have been; there
could hardly have been enough caves and barns for all these to have been
bred in. Every one of the multitude has a keen pair of eyes and a hungry
beak, and every single individual finds something to eat in the stubble.
Something that was not provided for them, crumbs that have escaped from
this broad table, and there they are every day for weeks together, still
finding food. If you will consider the incredible number of little
mouths, and the busy rate at which they ply them hour by hour, you may
imagine what an immense number of grains of wheat must have escaped man's
hand, for you must remember that every time they peck they take a whole
grain. Down, too, come the grey-blue wood-pigeons and the wild
turtle-doves. The singing linnets come in parties, the happy
greenfinches, the streaked yellow-hammers, as if any one had delicately
painted them in separate streaks, and not with a wash of colour, the
brown buntings, chaffinches--out they come from the hazel copses, where