Madam How and Lady Why; Or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children

But why should the lower rocks be older and the upper rocks newer?  You told me just now that the high mountains in Wales were ages older than Windsor Forest, upon which we stand: but yet how much lower we are here than if we were on a Welsh mountain.

Ah, my dear child, of course that puzzles you, and I am afraid it must puzzle you still till we have another talk; or rather it seems to me that the best way to explain that puzzle to you would be for you and me to go a journey into the far west, and look into the matter for ourselves; and from here to the far west we will go, either in fancy or on a real railroad and steamboat, before we have another talk about these things.

Now it is time to stop.  Is there anything more you want to know? for you look as if something was puzzling you still.

Were there any men in the world while all this was going on?

I think not.  We have no proof that there were not: but also we have no proof that there were; the cave-men, of whom I told you, lived many ages after the coal was covered up.  You seem to be sorry that there were no men in the world then.

Because it seems a pity that there was no one to see those beautiful coral-reefs and coal-forests.

No one to see them, my child?  Who told you that?  Who told you there are not, and never have been any rational beings in this vast universe, save certain weak, ignorant, short-sighted creatures shaped like you and me?  But even if it were so, and no created eye had ever beheld those ancient wonders, and no created heart ever enjoyed them, is there not one Uncreated who has seen them and enjoyed them from the beginning?  Were not these creatures enjoying themselves each after their kind?  And was there not a Father in Heaven who was enjoying their enjoyment, and enjoying too their beauty, which He had formed according to the ideas of His Eternal Mind?  Recollect what you were told on Trinity Sunday—That this world was not made for man alone: but that man, and this world, and the whole Universe was made for God; for He created all things, and for His pleasure they are, and were created.

CHAPTER X—FIELD AND WILD

Where were we to go next?  Into the far west, to see how all the way along the railroads the new rocks and soils lie above the older, and yet how, when we get westward, the oldest rocks rise highest into the air.

Well, we will go: but not, I think, to-day.  Indeed I hardly know how we could get as far as Reading; for all the world is in the hay-field, and even the old horse must go thither too, and take his turn at the hay-cart.  Well, the rocks have been where they are for many a year, and they will wait our leisure patiently enough: but Midsummer and the hay-field will not wait.  Let us take what God gives when He sends it, and learn the lesson that lies nearest to us.  After all, it is more to my old mind, and perhaps to your young mind too, to look at things which are young and fresh and living, rather than things which are old and worn and dead.  Let us leave the old stones, and the old bones, and the old shells, the wrecks of ancient worlds which have gone down into the kingdom of death, to teach us their grand lessons some other day; and let us look now at the world of light and life and beauty, which begins here at the open door, and stretches away over the hay-fields, over the woods, over the southern moors, over sunny France, and sunnier Spain, and over the tropic seas, down to the equator, and the palm-groves of the eternal summer.  If we cannot find something, even at starting from the open door, to teach us about Why and How, we must be very short-sighted, or very shallow-hearted.

There is the old cock starling screeching in the eaves, because he wants to frighten us away, and take a worm to his children, without our finding out whereabouts his hole is.  How does he know that we might hurt him? and how again does he not know that we shall not hurt him? we, who for five-and-twenty years have let him and his ancestors build under those eaves in peace?  How did he get that quantity of half-wit, that sort of stupid cunning, into his little brain, and yet get no more?  And why (for this is a question of Why, and not of How) does he labour all day long, hunting for worms and insects for his children, while his wife nurses them in the nest?  Why, too, did he help her to build that nest with toil and care this spring, for the sake of a set of nestlings who can be of no gain or use to him, but only take the food out of his mouth?  Simply out of—what shall I call it, my child?—Love; that same sense of love and duty, coming surely from that one Fountain of all duty and all love, which makes your father work for you.  That the mother should take care of her young, is wonderful enough; but that (at least among many birds) the father should help likewise, is (as you will find out as you grow older) more wonderful far.  So there already the old starling has set us two fresh puzzles about How and Why, neither of which we shall get answered, at least on this side of the grave.

Come on, up the field, under the great generous sun, who quarrels with no one, grudges no one, but shines alike upon the evil and the good.  What a gay picture he is painting now, with his light-pencils; for in them, remember, and not in the things themselves the colour lies.  See how, where the hay has been already carried, he floods all the slopes with yellow light, making them stand out sharp against the black shadows of the wood; while where the grass is standing still, he makes the sheets of sorrel-flower blush rosy red, or dapples the field with white oxeyes.

But is not the sorrel itself red, and the oxeyes white?

What colour are they at night, when the sun is gone?

Dark.

That is, no colour.  The very grass is not green at night.

Oh, but it is if you look at it with a lantern.

No, no.  It is the light of the lantern, which happens to be strong enough to make the leaves look green, though it is not strong enough to make a geranium look red.

Not red?

No; the geranium flowers by a lantern look black, while the leaves look green.  If you don’t believe me, we will try.

But why is that?

Why, I cannot tell: and how, you had best ask Professor Tyndall, if you ever have the honour of meeting him.

But now—hark to the mowing-machine, humming like a giant night-jar.  Come up and look at it, and see how swift and smooth it shears the long grass down, so that in the middle of the swathe it seems to have merely fallen flat, and you must move it before you find that it has been cut off.

Ah, there is a proof to us of what men may do if they will only learn the lessons which Madam How can teach them.  There is that boy, fresh from the National School, cutting more grass in a day than six strong mowers could have cut, and cutting it better, too; for the mowing-machine goes so much nearer to the ground than the scythe, that we gain by it two hundredweight of hay on every acre.  And see, too, how persevering old Madam How will not stop her work, though the machine has cut off all the grass which she has been making for the last three months; for as fast as we shear it off, she makes it grow again.  There are fresh blades, here at our feet, a full inch long, which have sprung up in the last two days, for the cattle when they are turned in next week.

But if the machine cuts all the grass, the poor mowers will have nothing to do.

Not so.  They are all busy enough elsewhere.  There is plenty of other work to be done, thank God; and wholesomer and easier work than mowing with a burning sun on their backs, drinking gallons of beer, and getting first hot and then cold across the loins, till they lay in a store of lumbago and sciatica, to cripple them in their old age.  You delight in machinery because it is curious: you should delight in it besides because it does good, and nothing but good, where it is used, according to the laws of Lady Why, with care, moderation, and mercy, and fair-play between man and man.  For example: just as the mowing-machine saves the mowers, the threshing-machine saves the threshers from rheumatism and chest complaints,—which they used to catch in the draught and dust of the unhealthiest place in the whole parish, which is, the old-fashioned barn’s floor.  And so, we may hope, in future years all heavy drudgery and dirty work will be done more and more by machines, and people will have more and more chance of keeping themselves clean and healthy, and more and more time to read, and learn, and think, and be true civilised men and women, instead of being mere live ploughs, or live manure-carts, such as I have seen ere now.

A live manure-cart?

Yes, child.  If you had seen, as I have seen, in foreign lands, poor women, haggard, dirty, grown old before their youth was over, toiling up hill with baskets of foul manure upon their backs, you would have said, as I have said, “Oh for Madam How to cure that ignorance!  Oh for Lady Why to cure that barbarism!  Oh that Madam How would teach them that machinery must always be cheaper in the long run than human muscles and nerves!  Oh that Lady Why would teach them that a woman is the most precious thing on earth, and that if she be turned into a beast of burden, Lady Why—and Madam How likewise—will surely avenge the wrongs of their human sister!”  There, you do not quite know what I mean, and I do not care that you should.  It is good for little folk that big folk should now and then “talk over their heads,” as the saying is, and make them feel how ignorant they are, and how many solemn and earnest questions there are in the world on which they must make up their minds some day, though not yet.  But now we will talk about the hay: or rather do you and the rest go and play in the hay and gather it up, build forts of it, storm them, pull them down, build them up again, shout, laugh, and scream till you are hot and tired.  You will please Madam How thereby, and Lady Why likewise.

How?

Because Madam How naturally wants her work to succeed, and she is at work now making you.

Making me?

Of course.  Making a man of you, out of a boy.  And that can only be done by the life-blood which runs through and through you.  And the more you laugh and shout, the more pure air will pass into your blood, and make it red and healthy; and the more you romp and play—unless you overtire yourself—the quicker will that blood flow through all your limbs, to make bone and muscle, and help you to grow into a man.

But why does Lady Why like to see us play?

She likes to see you happy, as she likes to see the trees and birds happy.  For she knows well that there is no food, nor medicine either, like happiness.  If people are not happy enough, they are often tempted to do many wrong deeds, and to think many wrong thoughts: and if by God’s grace they know the laws of Lady Why, and keep from sin, still unhappiness, if it goes on too long, wears them out, body and mind; and they grow ill and die, of broken hearts, and broken brains, my child; and so at last, poor souls, find “Rest beneath the Cross.”

Children, too, who are unhappy; children who are bullied, and frightened, and kept dull and silent, never thrive.  Their bodies do not thrive; for they grow up weak.  Their minds do not thrive; for they grow up dull.  Their souls do not thrive; for they learn mean, sly, slavish ways, which God forbid you should ever learn.  Well said the wise man, “The human plant, like the vegetables, can only flower in sunshine.”

So do you go, and enjoy yourself in the sunshine; but remember this—You know what happiness is.  Then if you wish to please Lady Why, and Lady Why’s Lord and King likewise, you will never pass a little child without trying to make it happier, even by a passing smile.  And now be off, and play in the hay, and come back to me when you are tired.

* * * * *

Let us lie down at the foot of this old oak, and see what we can see.

And hear what we can hear, too.  What is that humming all round us, now that the noisy mowing-machine has stopped?

And as much softer than the noise of mowing-machine hum, as the machines which make it are more delicate and more curious.  Madam How is a very skilful workwoman, and has eyes which see deeper and clearer than all microscopes; as you would find, if you tried to see what makes that “Midsummer hum” of which the haymakers are so fond, because it promises fair weather.

Why, it is only the gnats and flies.

Only the gnats and flies?  You might study those gnats and flies for your whole life without finding out all—or more than a very little—about them.  I wish I knew how they move those tiny wings of theirs—a thousand times in a second, I dare say, some of them.  I wish I knew how far they know that they are happy—for happy they must be, whether they know it or not.  I wish I knew how they live at all.  I wish I even knew how many sorts there are humming round us at this moment.

How many kinds?  Three or four?

More probably thirty or forty round this single tree.

But why should there be so many kinds of living things?  Would not one or two have done just as well?

Why, indeed?  Why should there not have been only one sort of butterfly, and he only of one colour, a plain brown, or a plain white?

And why should there be so many sorts of birds, all robbing the garden at once?  Thrushes, and blackbirds, and sparrows, and chaffinches, and greenfinches, and bullfinches, and tomtits.

And there are four kinds of tomtits round here, remember: but we may go on with such talk for ever.  Wiser men than we have asked the same question: but Lady Why will not answer them yet.  However, there is another question, which Madam How seems inclined to answer just now, which is almost as deep and mysterious.

What?

How all these different kinds of things became different.

Oh, do tell me!

Not I.  You must begin at the beginning, before you can end at the end, or even make one step towards the end.

What do you mean?

You must learn the differences between things, before you can find out how those differences came about.  You must learn Madam How’s alphabet before you can read her book.  And Madam How’s alphabet of animals and plants is, Species, Kinds of things.  You must see which are like, and which unlike; what they are like in, and what they are unlike in.  You are beginning to do that with your collection of butterflies.  You like to arrange them, and those that are most like nearest to each other, and to compare them.  You must do that with thousands of different kinds of things before you can read one page of Madam How’s Natural History Book rightly.

But it will take so much time and so much trouble.

God grant that you may not spend more time on worse matters, and take more trouble over things which will profit you far less.  But so it must be, willy-nilly.  You must learn the alphabet if you mean to read.  And you must learn the value of the figures before you can do a sum.  Why, what would you think of any one who sat down to play at cards—for money too (which I hope and trust you never will do)—before he knew the names of the cards, and which counted highest, and took the other?

Of course he would be very foolish.

Just as foolish are those who make up “theories” (as they call them) about this world, and how it was made, before they have found out what the world is made of.  You might as well try to find out how this hay-field was made, without finding out first what the hay is made of.

How the hay-field was made?  Was it not always a hay-field?

Ah, yes; the old story, my child: Was not the earth always just what it is now?  Let us see for ourselves whether this was always a hay-field.

How?

Just pick out all the different kinds of plants and flowers you can find round us here.  How many do you think there are?

Oh—there seem to be four or five.

Just as there were three or four kinds of flies in the air.  Pick them, child, and count.  Let us have facts.

How many?  What! a dozen already?

Yes—and here is another, and another.  Why, I have got I don’t know how many.

Why not?  Bring them here, and let us see.  Nine kinds of grasses, and a rush.  Six kinds of clovers and vetches; and besides, dandelion, and rattle, and oxeye, and sorrel, and plantain, and buttercup, and a little stitchwort, and pignut, and mouse-ear hawkweed, too, which nobody wants.

Why?

Because they are a sign that I am not a good farmer enough, and have not quite turned my Wild into Field.

What do you mean?

Look outside the boundary fence, at the moors and woods; they are forest, Wild—“Wald,” as the Germans would call it.  Inside the fence is Field—“Feld,” as the Germans would call it.  Guess why?

Is it because the trees inside have been felled?

Well, some say so, who know more than I.  But now go over the fence, and see how many of these plants you can find on the moor.

Oh, I think I know.  I am so often on the moor.

I think you would find more kinds outside than you fancy.  But what do you know?

That beside some short fine grass about the cattle-paths, there are hardly any grasses on the moor save deer’s hair and glade-grass; and all the rest is heath, and moss, and furze, and fern.

Softly—not all; you have forgotten the bog plants; and there are (as I said) many more plants beside on the moor than you fancy.  But we will look into that another time.  At all events, the plants outside are on the whole quite different from the hay-field.

Of course: that is what makes the field look green and the moor brown.

Not a doubt.  They are so different, that they look like bits of two different continents.  Scrambling over the fence is like scrambling out of Europe into Australia.  Now, how was that difference made?  Think.  Don’t guess, but think.  Why does the rich grass come up to the bank, and yet not spread beyond it?

I suppose because it cannot get over.

Not get over?  Would not the wind blow the seeds, and the birds carry them?  They do get over, in millions, I don’t doubt, every summer.

Then why do they not grow?

Think.

Is there any difference in the soil inside and out?

A very good guess.  But guesses are no use without facts.  Look.

Oh, I remember now.  I know now the soil of the field is brown, like the garden; and the soil of the moor all black and peaty.

Yes.  But if you dig down two or three feet, you will find the soils of the moor and the field just the same.  So perhaps the top soils were once both alike.

I know.

Well, and what do you think about it now?  I want you to look and think.  I want every one to look and think.  Half the misery in the world comes first from not looking, and then from not thinking.  And I do not want you to be miserable.

But shall I be miserable if I do not find out such little things as this.

You will be miserable if you do not learn to understand little things: because then you will not be able to understand great things when you meet them.  Children who are not trained to use their eyes and their common sense grow up the more miserable the cleverer they are.

Why?

Because they grow up what men call dreamers, and bigots, and fanatics, causing misery to themselves and to all who deal with them.  So I say again, think.

Well, I suppose men must have altered the soil inside the bank.

Well done.  But why do you think so?

Because, of course, some one made the bank; and the brown soil only goes up to it.

Well, that is something like common sense.  Now you will not say any more, as the cows or the butterflies might, that the hay-field was always there.

And how did men change the soil?

By tilling it with the plough, to sweeten it, and manuring it, to make it rich.

And then did all these beautiful grasses grow up of themselves?

You ought to know that they most likely did not.  You know the new enclosures?

Yes.

Well then, do rich grasses come up on them, now that they are broken up?

Oh no, nothing but groundsel, and a few weeds.

Just what, I dare say, came up here at first.  But this land was tilled for corn, for hundreds of years, I believe.  And just about one hundred years ago it was laid down in grass; that is, sown with grass seeds.

And where did men get the grass seeds from?

Ah, that is a long story; and one that shows our forefathers (though they knew nothing about railroads or electricity) were not such simpletons as some folks think.  The way it must have been done was this.  Men watched the natural pastures where cattle get fat on the wild grass, as they do in the Fens, and many other parts of England.  And then they saved the seeds of those fattening wild grasses, and sowed them in fresh spots.  Often they made mistakes.  They were careless, and got weeds among the seed—like the buttercups, which do so much harm to this pasture.  Or they sowed on soil which would not suit the seed, and it died.  But at last, after many failures, they have grown so careful and so clever, that you may send to certain shops, saying what sort of soil yours is, and they will send you just the seeds which will grow there, and no other; and then you have a good pasture for as long as you choose to keep it good.

And how is it kept good?

Look at all those loads of hay, which are being carried off the field.  Do you think you can take all that away without putting anything in its place?

Why not?

If I took all the butter out of the churn, what must I do if I want more butter still?

Put more cream in.

So, if I want more grass to grow, I must put on the soil more of what grass is made of.

But the butter don’t grow, and the grass does.

What does the grass grow in?

The soil.

Yes.  Just as the butter grows in the churn.  So you must put fresh grass-stuff continually into the soil, as you put fresh cream into the churn.  You have heard the farm men say, “That crop has taken a good deal out of the land”?

Yes.

Then they spoke exact truth.  What will that hay turn into by Christmas?  Can’t you tell?  Into milk, of course, which you will drink; and into horseflesh too, which you will use.

Use horseflesh?  Not eat it?

No; we have not got as far as that.  We did not even make up our minds to taste the Cambridge donkey.  But every time the horse draws the carriage, he uses up so much muscle; and that muscle he must get back again by eating hay and corn; and that hay and corn must be put back again into the land by manure, or there will be all the less for the horse next year.  For one cannot eat one’s cake and keep it too; and no more can one eat one’s grass.

So this field is a truly wonderful place.  It is no ugly pile of brick and mortar, with a tall chimney pouring out smoke and evil smells, with unhealthy, haggard people toiling inside.  Why do you look surprised?

Because—because nobody ever said it was.  You mean a manufactory.

Well, and this hay-field is a manufactory: only like most of Madam How’s workshops, infinitely more beautiful, as well as infinitely more crafty, than any manufactory of man’s building.  It is beautiful to behold, and healthy to work in; a joy and blessing alike to the eye, and the mind, and the body: and yet it is a manufactory.

But a manufactory of what?

Of milk of course, and cows, and sheep, and horses; and of your body and mine—for we shall drink the milk and eat the meat.  And therefore it is a flesh and milk manufactory.  We must put into it every year yard-stuff, tank-stuff, guano, bones, and anything and everything of that kin, that Madam How may cook it for us into grass, and cook the grass again into milk and meat.  But if we don’t give Madam How material to work on, we cannot expect her to work for us.  And what do you think will happen then?  She will set to work for herself.  The rich grasses will dwindle for want of ammonia (that is smelling salts), and the rich clovers for want of phosphates (that is bone-earth): and in their places will come over the bank the old weeds and grass off the moor, which have not room to get in now, because the ground is coveted already.  They want no ammonia nor phosphates—at all events they have none, and that is why the cattle on the moor never get fat.  So they can live where these rich grasses cannot.  And then they will conquer and thrive; and the Field will turn into Wild once more.

Ah, my child, thank God for your forefathers, when you look over that boundary mark.  For the difference between the Field and the Wild is the difference between the old England of Madam How’s making, and the new England which she has taught man to make, carrying on what she had only begun and had not time to finish.

That moor is a pattern bit left to show what the greater part of this land was like for long ages after it had risen out of the sea; when there was little or nothing on the flat upper moors save heaths, and ling, and club-mosses, and soft gorse, and needle-whin, and creeping willows; and furze and fern upon the brows; and in the bottoms oak and ash, beech and alder, hazel and mountain ash, holly and thorn, with here and there an aspen or a buckthorn (berry-bearing alder as you call it), and everywhere—where he could thrust down his long root, and thrust up his long shoots—that intruding conqueror and insolent tyrant, the bramble.  There were sedges and rushes, too, in the bogs, and coarse grass on the forest pastures—or “leas” as we call them to this day round here—but no real green fields; and, I suspect, very few gay flowers, save in spring the sheets of golden gorse, and in summer the purple heather.  Such was old England—or rather, such was this land before it was England; a far sadder, damper, poorer land than now.  For one man or one cow or sheep which could have lived on it then, a hundred can live now.  And yet, what it was once, that it might become again,—it surely would round here, if this brave English people died out of it, and the land was left to itself once more.

What would happen then, you may guess for yourself, from what you see happen whenever the land is left to itself, as it is in the wood above.  In that wood you can still see the grass ridges and furrows which show that it was once ploughed and sown by man; perhaps as late as the time of Henry the Eighth, when a great deal of poor land, as you will read some day, was thrown out of tillage, to become forest and down once more.  And what is the mount now?  A jungle of oak and beech, cherry and holly, young and old all growing up together, with the mountain ash and bramble and furze coming up so fast beneath them, that we have to cut the paths clear again year by year.  Why, even the little cow-wheat, a very old-world plant, which only grows in ancient woods, has found its way back again, I know not whence, and covers the open spaces with its pretty yellow and white flowers.  Man had conquered this mount, you see, from Madam How, hundreds of years ago.  And she always lets man conquer her, because Lady Why wishes man to conquer: only he must have a fair fight with Madam How first, and try his strength against hers to the utmost.  So man conquered the wood for a while; and it became cornfield instead of forest: but he was not strong and wise enough three hundred years ago to keep what he had conquered; and back came Madam How, and took the place into her own hands, and bade the old forest trees and plants come back again—as they would come if they were not stopped year by year, down from the wood, over the pastures—killing the rich grasses as they went, till they met another forest coming up from below, and fought it for many a year, till both made peace, and lived quietly side by side for ages.

Another forest coming up from below?  Where would it come from?

From where it is now.  Come down and look along the brook, and every drain and grip which runs into the brook.  What is here?

Seedling alders, and some withies among them.

Very well.  You know how we pull these alders up, and cut them down, and yet they continually come again.  Now, if we and all human beings were to leave this pasture for a few hundred years, would not those alders increase into a wood?  Would they not kill the grass, and spread right and left, seeding themselves more and more as the grass died, and left the ground bare, till they met the oaks and beeches coming down the hill?  And then would begin a great fight, for years and years, between oak and beech against alder and willow.

But how can trees fight?  Could they move or beat each other with their boughs?

Not quite that; though they do beat each other with their boughs, fiercely enough, in a gale of wind; and then the trees who have strong and stiff boughs wound those who have brittle and limp boughs, and so hurt them, and if the storms come often enough, kill them.  But among these trees in a sheltered valley the larger and stronger would kill the weaker and smaller by simply overshadowing their tops, and starving their roots; starving them, indeed, so much when they grow very thick, that the poor little acorns, and beech mast, and alder seeds would not be able to sprout at all.  So they would fight, killing each other’s children, till the war ended—I think I can guess how.

How?

The beeches are as dainty as they are beautiful; and they do not like to get their feet wet.  So they would venture down the hill only as far as the dry ground lasts, and those who tried to grow any lower would die.  But the oaks are hardy, and do not care much where they grow.  So they would fight their way down into the wet ground among the alders and willows, till they came to where their enemies were so thick and tall, that the acorns as they fell could not sprout in the darkness.  And so you would have at last, along the hill-side, a forest of beech and oak, lower down a forest of oak and alder, and along the stream-side alders and willows only.  And that would be a very fair example of the great law of the struggle for existence, which causes the competition of species.

What is that?

Madam How is very stern, though she is always perfectly just; and therefore she makes every living thing fight for its life, and earn its bread, from its birth till its death; and rewards it exactly according to its deserts, and neither more nor less.