England's Ideal, and Other Papers on Social Subjects

"Who has been wise receives interest."

-- Walt Whitman.

HAVING lately embarked in an agricultural enterprise on a small scale, I confess I was somewhat disconcerted, if not actually annoyed, by the persistency with which -- from the very outset and when I had been only two or three months at work -- I was met by the question at the head of this paper. Not only sisters, cousins and aunts, but relatives much more remote, and mere acquaintances, at the very first suggestion that I was engaged in trade, always plumped out with the query, Does it pay? And this struck me the more because, though I knew the point was important, I had in the innocence of my heart fancied that there might be other considerations of at least comparable weight. But I soon found out my mistake; for none of my well-to-do friends asked whether the work I was doing was wanted, or whether it would be useful to the community, or a means of healthy life to those engaged in it, or whether it was honest and of a kind that could be carried on without interior defilement; or even (except one or two) whether I liked it, but always: Does it pay? I say my well-to-do friends, because I couldn't help re

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