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, ****** 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 ****** 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.