t that, be sure," answered Best; "for that's to
exalt the dumb material above the worker, and if things were reduced to
such a pitch of perfection all round, there would be no need of large
populations. But we're told to increase and multiply at the command of
God, so you needn't fear machines will ever lower our power to do so. If
that happened, it would be as much as to say God allowed us to produce
something to our own undoing."

"He allows us to produce a fat lot of things to our own undoing,"
answered the hackler. "Ain't Nature under God's direction?"

"Without doubt, Levi."

"And don't Nature tickle us to our own undoing morning, noon, and night?
Ain't she always at it--always tempting us to go too far along the road
of our particular weakness? And ain't laziness the particular weakness
of all women and most men? 'Tis pandering to laziness, these machines,
and for my part I wish Ironsyde would get a machine to hackle once and
for all. Then I'd leave him and go where they still put muscles above
machinery."

"Funny you should say that," answered the foreman. "He's had the thought
of your retirement in his mind for a good bit now. Only consideration
for your feelings has prevented him dropping a hint. He always likes it
to come from us, rather than him, when anybody falls out."

Mr. Baggs took this with tolerable calm.

"I'll think of it next year," he said. "If I could get at him by a side
wind as to the size of the pension--"

"That's hid with him. He'll follow his father's rule, you may be sure,
and reward you according to your deserts."

"I don't expect that," said Mr. Baggs. "He don't know my deserts."

"Well, I shouldn't be in any great hurry for your own sake," advised
Best. "You're well and hard, and can do your work as it should be done;
but you must remember you've got no resources outside your hackling
shop. Take you away from it and you're a blank. You never read a book,
or go out for a walk, or even till your allotment ground. All you do is
to sit at home and criticise other people. In fact, you're a very
ignorant old man, Baggs, and if you retired, you'd find life hang that
heavy on your hands you'd hardly know how to kill time between meals.
Then you'd get fat and eat too much and shorten your days. I've known it
to happen, where a man who uses his muscles gives up work before his
flesh fails him."

Raymond Ironsyde joined them at this juncture and presently, when Levi
went back to his sho