and their hard little hearts, and the empty
place where their imagination ought to be! Dreadful, dreadful! Or
perhaps they go, say, to Assisi, and Saint Francis comes to talk to
them. And 'Look,' he says, 'what a beautiful world, if you'd only get
rid of your encumbrances! Money, houses, clothes, food, it's all so
much obstruction! Come and see the real thing; come and live with the
life of the soul; burn like a flame, blossom like a flower, flow like a
mountain stream!' 'My dear sir,' they reply, 'you're unclean, impudent
and ignorant! Moreover you're encouraging mendicancy and superstition.
Not to-day, thank you!' And off they go to the Charity Organisation
Committee. It's--it's----" He pulled himself up again, and then went
on more quietly. "Well, one oughtn't to get angry, and I dare say I'm
misrepresenting everybody. Besides, I haven't said exactly what I
wanted to say. I wanted to say--what was it? Oh, yes! that this kind
of attitude is bound up with the idea of progress. It comes of taking
all the value out of the past and present, in order to put it into the
future. And then you _don't_ put it there! You can't! It evaporates
somehow, in the process. Where is it then? Well, I believe it's
always there, in life, and in every kind of life. It's there all the
time, in all the things you condemn. Of course the things really are
bad that you say are bad. But they're so good as well! I mean--well,
the other day I read one of those dreadful articles--at least, of
course they're very useful I suppose--about the condition of the
agricultural labourer. Well, then I took a ride in the country, and
saw it all in its setting and complete, with everything the article had
left out; and it wasn't so bad after all. I don't mean to say it was
all good either, but it was just wonderful. There were great horses
with shaggy fetlocks resting in green fields, and cattle wading in
shallow fords, and streams fringed with willows, and little cheeping
birds among the reeds, and larks and cuckoos and thrushes. And there
were orchards white with blossom, and little gardens in the sun, and
shadows of clouds brushing over the plain. And the much-discussed
labourer was in the midst of all this. And he really wasn't an
incarnate grievance! He was thinking about his horses, or his bread
and cheese, or his children squalling in the road, or his pig and his
cocks and hens. Of course I don't suppose he knew how beautif