e and at Westminster our kith and kin are occupying
prominent positions. Disestablishment is at hand. We have closed
public-houses and erected chapels, each chapel being a factor in the
education of the masses in ideas of righteous government. You, my
friends, have secured much of the land, around which you have made
walls, and in which you have set water fountains, and have planted rare
plants and flowers. And you have put up your warning signs on
it--'Trespassers will be prosecuted.'

"There is coming the Registration of Workers Act, by which every worker
will be held to his locality, to his own enormous advantage. And it will
end strikes, and trades unionism will deservedly crumble. In future
these men will be able to settle down, and with God's blessing bring
children into the world, and their condition will be a delight unto
themselves and a profit to the community.

"But we must do more. I must do more. And you must help me. We must
stand together. Slander never creates; it shackles and kills. We must be
solid. Midway off the Cardigan coast--in beautiful Morfa--there is a
rock--Birds' Rock. As a boy I used to climb to the top of it, and watch
the waters swirling and tumbling about it, and around it and against it.
But I was unafraid. For I knew that the rock was old when man was young,
and that it had braved all the washings of the sea."

The men congratulated Ben; and Ben came home and he stood at a mirror,
and shaping his body put out his arms.

"How's this for my maiden speech in the house?" he asked his wife.
Presently he paused. "You're a fine one to be an M.P.'s lady," he said.
"You stout, underworked fool."

Ben urged on his imaginings: he advised his monarch, and to him for
favors merchants brought their gold, and mothers their daughters. Winter
and spring moved, and then his mind brought his enemies to his door.

"As the root of a tree spreads in the bosom of the earth," he said, "so
my fame shall spread over the world"; and he built a fence about his
house.

But his mind would not be stilled. Every midnight his enemies were at
the fence, and he could not sleep for the dreadful outcry; every
midnight he arose from his bed and walked aside the fence, testing the
strength of it with a hand and a shoulder and shooing away his enemies
as one does a brood of chickens from a cornfield.

His fortieth summer ran out--a season of short days and nights speeding
on the heels of night. Then peace fell upon h