ur the earth is kept at
man's service. If I have done you a good turn, you have done me a
better."

And he hoed vigorously at a root of dandelion.

Not for years had he felt so well in body and mind as during his walk
home. There, there was the thought for which he had been obscurely
groping! What were volumes of metaphysics and of sociology to the man
who had heard this one little truth whispered from the upturned mould?
Henceforth he knew _why_ he was living, and _how_ it behooved him to
live. Let theories and poesies follow if they would: for him, the prime
duty was that nearest to him, to strive his best that the little corner
of earth which he called his own should yield food for man. At this
moment there lay upon his table letters informing him of the
unsatisfactory state of his Kentish farm; the tenant was doing badly in
every sense of the word, and would willingly escape from his lease if
opportunity were given. Very well; the man should go.

"I will live there myself. I will get some practical man to live with
me, until I understand farming. For profit, I don't care; all will be
well if I keep myself alive and furnish food for a certain number of
other mortals. This is the work ready to my hand. No preaching, no
theorising, no trying to prove that the earth should be parcelled out
and every man turn delver. I will cultivate this ground because it is
mine, and because no other way offers of living as a man should--taking
some part, however humble, in the eternal strife with nature."

The idea had before now suggested itself to him, but not as the result
of a living conviction. If he had then turned to farming, it would have
been as an experiment in life; more or less vague reflections on the
needs of the time would have seemed to justify him. Now he was
indifferent to all "questions" save that prime solicitude of the human
race, how to hold its own against the hostile forces everywhere leagued
against it. Life was a perpetual struggle, and, let dreamers say what
they might, could never be anything else; he, for one, perceived no
right that he had to claim exemption from the doom of labour. Had he
felt an impulse to any other kind of work, well and good, he would have
turned to it; but nothing whatever called to him with imperative voice
save this task of tilling his own acres. It might not always satisfy
him; he took no vow of one sole vocation; he had no desire to let his
mind rust whilst his hands grew hor