stones for a bit o' bread and a pipe o' baccy once a week--it ain't
good enough." He pulled a blackened clay from his pocket and began
slowly filling it with rank tobacco; then he lit it carefully
behind his battered hat, put the spent match back in his pocket,
rose to his feet, hitched his braces, and, with a silent nod to me,
went on to his job.

Why do we give these tired children, whose minds move slowly, whose
eyes are holden that they cannot read the Book, whose hearts are
full of sore resentment against they know not what, such work as
this to do--hammering their hearts out for a bit of bread? All the
pathos of unreasoning labour rings in these few words. We fit the
collar on unwilling necks; and when their service is over we bid
them go out free; but we break the good Mosaic law and send them
away empty. What wonder there is so little willing service, so few
ears ready to be thrust through against the master's door.

The swift stride of civilisation is leaving behind individual
effort, and turning man into the Daemon of a machine. To and fro
in front of the long loom, lifting a lever at either end, paces he
who once with painstaking intelligence drove the shuttle. THEN he
tasted the joy of completed work, that which his eye had looked
upon, and his hands had handled; now his work is as little finished
as the web of Penelope. Once the reaper grasped the golden corn
stems, and with dexterous sweep of sickle set free the treasure of
the earth. Once the creatures of the field were known to him, and
his eye caught the flare of scarlet and blue as the frail poppies
and sturdy corn-cockles laid down their beauty at his feet; now he
sits serene on Juggernaut's car, its guiding Daemon, and the field
is silent to him.