Madam How and Lady Why [74]
become a selfish and ambitious tyrant, but as wise Plato came, that he might learn the laws of Lady Why, and love them for her sake, and teach them to all mankind. And so you, like the plants and animals, will get your deserts exactly, without competing and struggling for existence as they do.
And all this has come out of looking at the hay-field and the wild moor.
Why not? There is an animal in you, and there is a man in you. If the animal gets the upper hand, all your character will fall back into wild useless moor; if the man gets the upper hand, all your character will be cultivated into rich and fertile field. Choose.
Now come down home. The haymakers are resting under the hedge. The horses are dawdling home to the farm. The sun is getting low, and the shadows long. Come home, and go to bed while the house is fragrant with the smell of hay, and dream that you are still playing among the haycocks. When you grow old, you will have other and sadder dreams.
CHAPTER XI--THE WORLD'S END
Hullo! hi! wake up. Jump out of bed, and come to the window, and see where you are.
What a wonderful place!
So it is: though it is only poor old Ireland. Don't you recollect that when we started I told you we were going to Ireland, and through it to the World's End; and here we are now safe at the end of the old world, and beyond us the great Atlantic, and beyond that again, thousands of miles away, the new world, which will be rich and prosperous, civilised and noble, thousands of years hence, when this old world, it may be, will be dead, and little children there will be reading in their history books of Ancient England and of Ancient France, as you now read of Greece and Rome.
But what a wonderful place it is! What are those great green things standing up in the sky, all over purple ribs and bars, with their tops hid in the clouds?
Those are mountains; the bones of some old world, whose poor bare sides Madam How is trying to cover with rich green grass.
And how far off are they?
How I should like to walk up to the top of that one which looks quite close.
You will find it a long walk up there; three miles, I dare say, over black bogs and banks of rock, and up corries and cliffs which you could not climb. There are plenty of cows on that mountain: and yet they look so small, you could not see them, nor I either, without a glass. That long white streak, zigzagging down the mountain side, is a roaring cataract of foam five hundred feet high, full now with last night's rain; but by this afternoon it will have dwindled to a little thread; and to-morrow, when you get up, if no more rain has come down, it will be gone. Madam How works here among the mountains swiftly and hugely, and sometimes terribly enough; as you shall see when you have had your breakfast, and come down to the bridge with me.
But what a beautiful place it is! Flowers and woods and a lawn; and what is that great smooth patch in the lawn just under the window?
Is it an empty flower-bed?
Ah, thereby hangs a strange tale. We will go and look at it after breakfast, and then you shall see with your own eyes one of the wonders which I have been telling you of.
And what is that shining between the trees?
Water.
Is it a lake?
Not a lake, though there are plenty round here; that is salt water, not fresh. Look away to the right, and you see it through the opening of the woods again and again: and now look above the woods. You see a faint blue line, and gray and purple lumps like clouds, which rest upon it far away. That, child, is the great Atlantic Ocean, and those are islands in the far west. The water which washes the bottom of the lawn was but a few months ago pouring out of the Gulf of Mexico, between the Bahamas and Florida, and swept away here as the great ocean river of warm water which we call the Gulf Stream, bringing with it out of the open ocean the shoals of mackerel, and the porpoises and whales which feed upon them. Some fine afternoon we will run down the bay and catch strange fishes,
And all this has come out of looking at the hay-field and the wild moor.
Why not? There is an animal in you, and there is a man in you. If the animal gets the upper hand, all your character will fall back into wild useless moor; if the man gets the upper hand, all your character will be cultivated into rich and fertile field. Choose.
Now come down home. The haymakers are resting under the hedge. The horses are dawdling home to the farm. The sun is getting low, and the shadows long. Come home, and go to bed while the house is fragrant with the smell of hay, and dream that you are still playing among the haycocks. When you grow old, you will have other and sadder dreams.
CHAPTER XI--THE WORLD'S END
Hullo! hi! wake up. Jump out of bed, and come to the window, and see where you are.
What a wonderful place!
So it is: though it is only poor old Ireland. Don't you recollect that when we started I told you we were going to Ireland, and through it to the World's End; and here we are now safe at the end of the old world, and beyond us the great Atlantic, and beyond that again, thousands of miles away, the new world, which will be rich and prosperous, civilised and noble, thousands of years hence, when this old world, it may be, will be dead, and little children there will be reading in their history books of Ancient England and of Ancient France, as you now read of Greece and Rome.
But what a wonderful place it is! What are those great green things standing up in the sky, all over purple ribs and bars, with their tops hid in the clouds?
Those are mountains; the bones of some old world, whose poor bare sides Madam How is trying to cover with rich green grass.
And how far off are they?
How I should like to walk up to the top of that one which looks quite close.
You will find it a long walk up there; three miles, I dare say, over black bogs and banks of rock, and up corries and cliffs which you could not climb. There are plenty of cows on that mountain: and yet they look so small, you could not see them, nor I either, without a glass. That long white streak, zigzagging down the mountain side, is a roaring cataract of foam five hundred feet high, full now with last night's rain; but by this afternoon it will have dwindled to a little thread; and to-morrow, when you get up, if no more rain has come down, it will be gone. Madam How works here among the mountains swiftly and hugely, and sometimes terribly enough; as you shall see when you have had your breakfast, and come down to the bridge with me.
But what a beautiful place it is! Flowers and woods and a lawn; and what is that great smooth patch in the lawn just under the window?
Is it an empty flower-bed?
Ah, thereby hangs a strange tale. We will go and look at it after breakfast, and then you shall see with your own eyes one of the wonders which I have been telling you of.
And what is that shining between the trees?
Water.
Is it a lake?
Not a lake, though there are plenty round here; that is salt water, not fresh. Look away to the right, and you see it through the opening of the woods again and again: and now look above the woods. You see a faint blue line, and gray and purple lumps like clouds, which rest upon it far away. That, child, is the great Atlantic Ocean, and those are islands in the far west. The water which washes the bottom of the lawn was but a few months ago pouring out of the Gulf of Mexico, between the Bahamas and Florida, and swept away here as the great ocean river of warm water which we call the Gulf Stream, bringing with it out of the open ocean the shoals of mackerel, and the porpoises and whales which feed upon them. Some fine afternoon we will run down the bay and catch strange fishes,