Madam How and Lady Why | Page 5

simply by lying soft and warm upon her bosom;

and so (as Our Lord told the Jews of old) it is by watching the common
natural things around you, and considering the lilies of the field, how
they grow, that you will begin at least to learn that far Diviner mystery,
that you have a Father in Heaven. And so you will be delivered (if you
will) out of the tyranny of darkness, and distrust, and fear, into God's
free kingdom of light, and faith, and love; and will be safe from the
venom of that tree which is more deadly than the fabled upas of the
East. Who planted that tree I know not, it was planted so long ago: but
surely it is none of God's planting, neither of the Son of God: yet it
grows in all lands and in all climes, and sends its hidden suckers far
and wide, even (unless we be watchful) into your hearts and mine. And
its name is the Tree of Unreason, whose roots are conceit and ignorance,
and its juices folly and death. It drops its venom into the finest brains;
and makes them call sense, nonsense; and nonsense, sense; fact, fiction;
and fiction, fact. It drops its venom into the tenderest hearts, alas! and
makes them call wrong, right; and right, wrong; love, cruelty; and
cruelty, love. Some say that the axe is laid to the root of it just now, and
that it is already tottering to its fall: while others say that it is growing
stronger than ever, and ready to spread its upas-shade over the whole
earth. For my part, I know not, save that all shall be as God wills. The
tree has been cut down already again and again; and yet has always
thrown out fresh shoots and dropped fresh poison from its boughs. But
this at least I know: that any little child, who will use the faculties God
has given him, may find an antidote to all its poison in the meanest
herb beneath his feet.
There, you do not understand me, my boys; and the best prayer I can
offer for you is, perhaps, that you should never need to understand me:
but if that sore need should come, and that poison should begin to
spread its mist over your brains and hearts, then you will be proof
against it; just in proportion as you have used the eyes and the common
sense which God has given you, and have considered the lilies of the
field, how they grow.
C. KINGSLEY.

CHAPTER I
--THE GLEN

You find it dull walking up here upon Hartford Bridge Flat this sad
November day? Well, I do not deny that the moor looks somewhat
dreary, though dull it need never be. Though the fog is clinging to the
fir-trees, and creeping among the heather, till you cannot see as far as
Minley Corner, hardly as far as Bramshill woods--and all the Berkshire
hills are as invisible as if it was a dark midnight--yet there is plenty to
be seen here at our very feet. Though there is nothing left for you to
pick, and all the flowers are dead and brown, except here and there a
poor half- withered scrap of bottle-heath, and nothing left for you to
catch either, for the butterflies and insects are all dead too, except one
poor old Daddy-long-legs, who sits upon that piece of turf, boring a
hole with her tail to lay her eggs in, before the frost catches her and
ends her like the rest: though all things, I say, seem dead, yet there is
plenty of life around you, at your feet, I may almost say in the very
stones on which you tread. And though the place itself be dreary
enough, a sheet of flat heather and a little glen in it, with banks of dead
fern, and a brown bog between them, and a few fir-trees struggling
up--yet, if you only have eyes to see it, that little bit of glen is beautiful
and wonderful,--so beautiful and so wonderful and so cunningly
devised, that it took thousands of years to make it; and it is not, I
believe, half finished yet.
How do I know all that? Because a fairy told it me; a fairy who lives up
here upon the moor, and indeed in most places else, if people have but
eyes to see her. What is her name? I cannot tell. The best name that I
can give her (and I think it must be something like her real name,
because she will always answer if you call her by it patiently and
reverently) is Madam How. She will come in good time, if she is called,
even by a little child. And