a chalk-cart," or only a mouse, or only a dead
leaf. Chalk-carts, like mice, and dead leaves, and most other matters in
the universe are very curious and odd things in the eyes of wise and
reasonable people. Whenever I hear young men saying "only" this and
"only" that, I begin to suspect them of belonging, not to the noble army
of sages--much less to the most noble army of martyrs,--but to the
ignoble army of noodles, who think nothing interesting or important but
dinners, and balls, and races, and back-biting their neighbours; and I
should be sorry to see you enlisting in that regiment when you grow up.
But think--are not chalk-carts very odd and curious things? I think they
are. To my mind, it is a curious question how men ever thought of
inventing wheels; and, again, when they first thought of it. It is a
curious question, too, how men ever found out that they could make horses
work for them, and so began to tame them, instead of eating them, and a
curious question (which I think we shall never get answered) when the
first horse-tamer lived, and in what country. And a very curious, and,
to me, a beautiful sight it is, to see those two noble horses obeying
that little boy, whom they could kill with a single kick.

But, beside all this, there is a question, which ought to be a curious
one to you (for I suspect you cannot answer it)--Why does the farmer take
the trouble to send his cart and horses eight miles and more, to draw in
chalk from Odiham chalk-pit?

Oh, he is going to put it on the land, of course. They are chalking the
bit at the top of the next field, where the copse was grubbed.

But what good will he do by putting chalk on it? Chalk is not rich and
fertile, like manure, it is altogether poor, barren stuff: you know that,
or ought to know it. Recollect the chalk cuttings and banks on the
railway between Basingstoke and Winchester--how utterly barren they are.
Though they have been open these thirty years, not a blade of grass,
hardly a bit of moss, has grown on them, or will grow, perhaps, for
centuries.

Come, let us find out something about the chalk before we talk about the
caves. The chalk is here, and the caves are not; and "Learn from the
thing that lies nearest you" is as good a rule as "Do the duty which lies
nearest you." Let us come into the grubbed bit, and ask the farmer--there
he is in his gig.

Well, old friend, and how are you? Here is a little boy who wants to
know why you