Madam How and Lady Why [65]
makes the sheets of sorrel-flower blush rosy red, or dapples the field with white oxeyes.
But is not the sorrel itself red, and the oxeyes white?
What colour are they at night, when the sun is gone?
Dark.
That is, no colour. The very grass is not green at night.
Oh, but it is if you look at it with a lantern.
No, no. It is the light of the lantern, which happens to be strong enough to make the leaves look green, though it is not strong enough to make a geranium look red.
Not red?
No; the geranium flowers by a lantern look black, while the leaves look green. If you don't believe me, we will try.
But why is that?
Why, I cannot tell: and how, you had best ask Professor Tyndall, if you ever have the honour of meeting him.
But now--hark to the mowing-machine, humming like a giant night- jar. Come up and look at it, and see how swift and smooth it shears the long grass down, so that in the middle of the swathe it seems to have merely fallen flat, and you must move it before you find that it has been cut off.
Ah, there is a proof to us of what men may do if they will only learn the lessons which Madam How can teach them. There is that boy, fresh from the National School, cutting more grass in a day than six strong mowers could have cut, and cutting it better, too; for the mowing-machine goes so much nearer to the ground than the scythe, that we gain by it two hundredweight of hay on every acre. And see, too, how persevering old Madam How will not stop her work, though the machine has cut off all the grass which she has been making for the last three months; for as fast as we shear it off, she makes it grow again. There are fresh blades, here at our feet, a full inch long, which have sprung up in the last two days, for the cattle when they are turned in next week.
But if the machine cuts all the grass, the poor mowers will have nothing to do.
Not so. They are all busy enough elsewhere. There is plenty of other work to be done, thank God; and wholesomer and easier work than mowing with a burning sun on their backs, drinking gallons of beer, and getting first hot and then cold across the loins, till they lay in a store of lumbago and sciatica, to cripple them in their old age. You delight in machinery because it is curious: you should delight in it besides because it does good, and nothing but good, where it is used, according to the laws of Lady Why, with care, moderation, and mercy, and fair-play between man and man. For example: just as the mowing-machine saves the mowers, the threshing-machine saves the threshers from rheumatism and chest complaints,--which they used to catch in the draught and dust of the unhealthiest place in the whole parish, which is, the old-fashioned barn's floor. And so, we may hope, in future years all heavy drudgery and dirty work will be done more and more by machines, and people will have more and more chance of keeping themselves clean and healthy, and more and more time to read, and learn, and think, and be true civilised men and women, instead of being mere live ploughs, or live manure-carts, such as I have seen ere now.
A live manure-cart?
Yes, child. If you had seen, as I have seen, in foreign lands, poor women, haggard, dirty, grown old before their youth was over, toiling up hill with baskets of foul manure upon their backs, you would have said, as I have said, "Oh for Madam How to cure that ignorance! Oh for Lady Why to cure that barbarism! Oh that Madam How would teach them that machinery must always be cheaper in the long run than human muscles and nerves! Oh that Lady Why would teach them that a woman is the most precious thing on earth, and that if she be turned into a beast of burden, Lady Why--and Madam How likewise--will surely avenge the wrongs of their human sister!" There, you do not quite know what I mean, and I do not care that you should. It is good for little folk that big folk should now and then "talk over their heads," as the saying is, and make them feel how ignorant they are, and how many solemn and earnest
But is not the sorrel itself red, and the oxeyes white?
What colour are they at night, when the sun is gone?
Dark.
That is, no colour. The very grass is not green at night.
Oh, but it is if you look at it with a lantern.
No, no. It is the light of the lantern, which happens to be strong enough to make the leaves look green, though it is not strong enough to make a geranium look red.
Not red?
No; the geranium flowers by a lantern look black, while the leaves look green. If you don't believe me, we will try.
But why is that?
Why, I cannot tell: and how, you had best ask Professor Tyndall, if you ever have the honour of meeting him.
But now--hark to the mowing-machine, humming like a giant night- jar. Come up and look at it, and see how swift and smooth it shears the long grass down, so that in the middle of the swathe it seems to have merely fallen flat, and you must move it before you find that it has been cut off.
Ah, there is a proof to us of what men may do if they will only learn the lessons which Madam How can teach them. There is that boy, fresh from the National School, cutting more grass in a day than six strong mowers could have cut, and cutting it better, too; for the mowing-machine goes so much nearer to the ground than the scythe, that we gain by it two hundredweight of hay on every acre. And see, too, how persevering old Madam How will not stop her work, though the machine has cut off all the grass which she has been making for the last three months; for as fast as we shear it off, she makes it grow again. There are fresh blades, here at our feet, a full inch long, which have sprung up in the last two days, for the cattle when they are turned in next week.
But if the machine cuts all the grass, the poor mowers will have nothing to do.
Not so. They are all busy enough elsewhere. There is plenty of other work to be done, thank God; and wholesomer and easier work than mowing with a burning sun on their backs, drinking gallons of beer, and getting first hot and then cold across the loins, till they lay in a store of lumbago and sciatica, to cripple them in their old age. You delight in machinery because it is curious: you should delight in it besides because it does good, and nothing but good, where it is used, according to the laws of Lady Why, with care, moderation, and mercy, and fair-play between man and man. For example: just as the mowing-machine saves the mowers, the threshing-machine saves the threshers from rheumatism and chest complaints,--which they used to catch in the draught and dust of the unhealthiest place in the whole parish, which is, the old-fashioned barn's floor. And so, we may hope, in future years all heavy drudgery and dirty work will be done more and more by machines, and people will have more and more chance of keeping themselves clean and healthy, and more and more time to read, and learn, and think, and be true civilised men and women, instead of being mere live ploughs, or live manure-carts, such as I have seen ere now.
A live manure-cart?
Yes, child. If you had seen, as I have seen, in foreign lands, poor women, haggard, dirty, grown old before their youth was over, toiling up hill with baskets of foul manure upon their backs, you would have said, as I have said, "Oh for Madam How to cure that ignorance! Oh for Lady Why to cure that barbarism! Oh that Madam How would teach them that machinery must always be cheaper in the long run than human muscles and nerves! Oh that Lady Why would teach them that a woman is the most precious thing on earth, and that if she be turned into a beast of burden, Lady Why--and Madam How likewise--will surely avenge the wrongs of their human sister!" There, you do not quite know what I mean, and I do not care that you should. It is good for little folk that big folk should now and then "talk over their heads," as the saying is, and make them feel how ignorant they are, and how many solemn and earnest