ee-tenths was about the yield. They too with their three-tenths
were comparatively well off. Some distance from them the yield had
not been more than two-tenths, and a little beyond that again,
there were fields which had been sown, but never reaped. There had
been nothing to reap. Nothing had grown. I passed some of these
fields afterwards and saw them. Was it wonderful then that the main
thought in their minds should be the harvest failure, and that they
should be mainly anxious to know how to secure a good season next
year? Looking at my audience I saw that nine-tenths of them were
poorly clad. Nearly one-half of them were quite insufficiently
clothed, and many were in garments suited to summer weather only. I
was in a sheepskin coat and felt shoes, and even thus was not too
warm, and could not help thinking how cold they must be, in their
torn clothes and ordinary shoes. In addition to this they seemed
hungry. I dare say perhaps one-half of them were in actual
suffering from deficiency of food.

'Taking these things into consideration, I did not regard their
great and often-repeated question, "How about the harvest?" as
impertinent, and set myself to answer it. When the question was
again asked I replied by asking another, namely, "_Do you think you
deserve good harvests?_" This question usually made them stare and
ask, "Why should not we deserve good harvests?" and I would reply,
"In the first place, because of that _tobacco pipe in your mouth_."
A laugh of incredulity would usually pass round the audience, but
when done laughing, and asked to consider the folly of spending
money buying a pipe and tobacco when the smoker was shivering in
his rags, and hungry, and especially when asked what was the good
of smoking, they laughed no more. When pressed to say where the
tobacco came from, they would admit that the cultivation of tobacco
took up no small proportion of their better-class land, and when
pressed to say how much land was given up to tobacco cultivation,
they would admit, what did not seem to have occurred to them
before, that the amount of land given up to tobacco cultivation was
very large. How large it was I had no conception till the following
summer, when, walking round the suburbs, I would look over the low
mud walls of their garden