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

But you said that the coal was made from plants and trees, and did plants and trees grow on this coral-reef?

That I cannot say.  Trees may have grown on the dry parts of the reef, as cocoa-nuts grow now in the Pacific.  But the coal was not laid down upon it till long afterwards, when it had gone through many and strange changes.  For all through the chine of England, and in a part of Ireland too, there lies upon the top of the limestone a hard gritty rock, in some places three thousand feet thick, which is commonly called “the mill-stone grit.”  And above that again the coal begins.  Now to make that 3000 feet of hard rock, what must have happened?  The sea-bottom must have sunk, slowly no doubt, carrying the coral-reefs down with it, 3000 feet at least.  And meanwhile sand and mud, made from the wearing away of the old lands in the North must have settled down upon it.  I say from the North—for there are no fossils, as far as I know, or sign of life, in these rocks of mill-stone grit; and therefore it is reasonable to suppose that they were brought from a cold current at the Pole, too cold to allow sea-beasts to live,—quite cold enough, certainly, to kill coral insects, who could only thrive in warm water coming from the South.

Then, to go on with my story, upon the top of these mill-stone grits came sand and mud, and peat, and trees, and plants, washed out to sea, as far as we can guess, from the mouths of vast rivers flowing from the West, rivers as vast as the Amazon, the Mississippi, or the Orinoco are now; and so in long ages, upon the top of the limestone and upon the top of the mill-stone grit, were laid down those beds of coal which you see burnt now in every fire.

But how did the coral-reefs rise till they became cliffs at Bristol and mountains in Yorkshire?

The earthquake steam, I suppose, raised them.  One earthquake indeed, or series of earthquakes, there was, running along between Lancashire and Yorkshire, which made that vast crack and upheaval in the rocks, the Craven Fault, running, I believe, for more than a hundred miles, and lifting the rocks in some places several hundred feet.  That earthquake helped to make the high hills which overhang Manchester and Preston, and all the manufacturing county of Lancashire.  That earthquake helped to make the perpendicular cliff at Malham Cove, and many another beautiful bit of scenery.  And that and other earthquakes, by heating the rocks from the fires below, may have helped to change them from soft coral into hard crystalline marble as you see them now, just as volcanic heat has hardened and purified the beautiful white marbles of Pentelicus and Paros in Greece, and Carrara in Italy, from which statues are carved unto this day.  Or the same earthquake may have heated and hardened the limestones simply by grinding and squeezing them; or they may have been heated and hardened in the course of long ages simply by the weight of the thousands of feet of other rock which lay upon them.  For pressure, you must remember, produces heat.  When you strike flint and steel together, the pressure of the blow not only makes bits of steel fly off, but makes them fly off in red-hot sparks.  When you hammer a piece of iron with a hammer, you will soon find it get quite warm.  When you squeeze the air together in your pop-gun, you actually make the air inside warmer, till the pellet flies out, and the air expands and cools again.  Nay, I believe you cannot hold up a stone on the palm of your hand without that stone after a while warming your hand, because it presses against you in trying to fall, and you press against it in trying to hold it up.  And recollect above all the great and beautiful example of that law which you were lucky enough to see on the night of the 14th of November 1867, how those falling stars, as I told you then, were coming out of boundless space, colder than any ice on earth, and yet, simply by pressing against the air above our heads, they had their motion turned into heat, till they burned themselves up into trains of fiery dust.  So remember that wherever you have pressure you have heat, and that the pressure of the upper rocks upon the lower is quite enough, some think, to account for the older and lower rocks being harder than the upper and newer ones.

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.