ly
lady--a voice as clear as a diamond ring. It inspired us one and all
with a hireath for the dear old homeland--for dear Wales, for the land
of our fathers and mothers too, for the land that is our heritage not
by Act of Parliament but by the Act of God....

"Who ownss this land to-day? The squaire and the parshon. By what right?
By the same right as the thief who steals your silk and your laces, and
your milk and butter, and your reddy-made blousis. I know a farm of one
hundred acres, each rod having been tamed from heatherland into a manna
of abundance. Tamed by human bones and muscles--God's invested capital
in His chosen children. Six months ago this land--this fertile and rich
land--was wrestled away from the owners. The bones of the living and the
dead were wrestled away. I saw it three months ago--a wylderness. The
clod had been squeesed of its zweat. The land belonged to my father, and
his father, and his father, back to countless generations....

"I am proud to be among my people to-night. How sorry I am for any one
who are not Welsh. We have a language as ancient as the hills that
shelter us, and the rivers that never weery of refreshing us....

"Only recently a few shop-assistants--a handful of
counter-jumpers--tried to shake the integrity of our commerse. But their
white cuffs held back their aarms, and the white collars choked their
aambitions. When I was a small boy my mam used to tell me how the chief
Satan was caught trying to put his hand over the sun so as to give other
satans a chance of doing wrong on earth in the dark. That was the object
of these misguided fools. They had no grievances. I have since
investigated the questions of living-in and fines. Both are fair and
necessary. The man who tries to destroy them is like the swimmer who
plunges among the water lilies to be dragged into destruction....

"Welsh was talked in the Garden of Aden. That is where commerse began.
Didn't Eve buy the apple?...

"Ladies and gentlemen, Cymrodorion, listen. There is a going in these
classical old rafterss. It is the coming of God. And the message He
gives you this night is this: 'Men of Gwalia, march on and keep you
tails up.'"

From that hour Ben flourished. He broke his league with the
shop-assistants. Those whom he had troubled lost courage and humbled
themselves before their employers; but their employers would have none
of them, man or woman, boy or girl.

Vexation followed his prosperity. His fath