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
questions there are in the world on which they must make up their minds
some day, though not yet. But now we will talk about the hay: or rather
do you and the rest go and play in the hay and gather it up, build forts
of it, storm them, pull them down, build them up again, shout, laugh, and
scream till you are hot and tired.
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