farm-yard pond.

"Good-morning, Little. This is your fellow-workman."

"He does not look up to much," said Henry, with all a workman's
bluntness.

"What, you have found him out! Never mind; he can beat the town at one
or two things, and it is for these we will use him. Some call him an
idiot. The expression is neat and vigorous, but not precise; so I have
christened him the Anomaly. Anomaly, this is Mr. Little; go and shake
hands with him, and admire him."

The Anomaly went directly, and gazed into Little's face for some time.

He then made his report. "He is beautiful and black."

"I've seen him blacker. Now leave off admiring him, and look at these
pictures while I prose. Two thousand philosophers are writing us
dead with 'Labor and Capital.' But I vary the bore. 'Life, Labor, and
Capital,' is my chant: and, whereas Life has hitherto been banished from
the discussion, I put Life in its true place, at the head of the trio.
(And Life I divide into long Life, and happy Life.) The subject is too
vast to be dealt with all at once; but I'll give you a peep of it. The
rustic laborer in the South sells his labor for too little money to
support life comfortably. That is a foul wrong. The rustic laborer in
the North has small wages, compared with a pitman, or a cutler; but he
has enough for health, and he lives longer and more happily than either
the pitman or the cutler; so that account is square, in my view of
things. But now dive into the Hillsborough trades, and you will find
this just balance of Life, Labor, and Capital regarded in some, but
defied in others: a forger is paid as much or more than a dry-grinder,
though forging is a hard but tolerably healthy trade, and dry-grinding
means an early death after fifteen years of disease and misery. The
file-cutters are even more killed and less paid. What is to be done
then? Raise the wages of the more homicidal trades! But this could only
be done by all the Unions acting in concert. Now the rival philosophers,
who direct the Unions, are all against Democritus--that's myself; they
set no value on life. And indeed the most intelligent one, Grotait,
smiles blandly on Death, and would grind his scythe for him--AT THE
STATEMENT PRICE--because that scythe thins the labor market, and so
helps keep up prices."

"Then what can we do? I'm a proof one can't fight the Unions."

"Do? Why, lay hold of the stick at the other end. Let Pseudo-Philosophy
set the means above the end, a