, if you can, something more about the world you live
in; something more about God who made the world.

And you come here to educate yourselves; to educe and bring out your
own powers of perceiving, judging, reasoning; to improve yourselves
in the art of all arts, which is, the art of learning. That is
mental education.

Now if a gravel-pit will teach you a little about these things, you
will surely call it a rich gravel-pit. If it helps you to wisdom,
which is worth more than gold; which is the only way to get gold
wisely, and spend it wisely; then we will call our pit no more a
gravel-pit, but a wisdom-pit, a mine of wisdom.

Let us go out, then, in fancy (for it is too cold to go out in
person) to Hook Common, scramble down into the first gravel-pit we
come to, and see what we can see.

The first thing we see is a quantity of stones, more or less
rounded, lying in gravel and poor clay.

Well--what do those stones tell us?

These stones, as I told you when I addressed you last, are ancient
and venerable worthies. They have seen a great deal in their time.
They have had a great deal of knocking about, and have stood it
manfully. They have stood the knocking about of three worlds
already; and have done their duty therein; and they are ready (if
you choose to mend the road with them) to stand the knocking about
of this fourth world, and being most excellent gravel, to do their
duty in this world likewise; which is more, I fear, than either you
or I can say for ourselves.

Three worlds?

Yes. Standing there in the gravel-pit, I see three old worlds, in
each of which these stones played their part; and this world of man
for the fourth, and the best of all--for man if not for the stones.
I speak sober truth. Let me explain it step by step.

You know the chalk-hills to the south; and the sands of Crooksbury
and the Hind Head beyond them. There is one world.

You know the clays and sands of Hook and Newnham, Dogmersfield and
Shapley Heath, and all the country to the north as far as Reading.
There is a second world.

You know the gravel-pit itself; and all the upper soils and gravels,
which are spread over the length and breadth of the country to the
north. There is a third world.

Let us take them one by one.

First, the chalk.

The chalk-hills rise much higher than the surrounding country; but
you must not therefore suppose that they were made after it, and
laid on the top of it. That guess would