nd; and I heard some sailors uttering a measured shout as they
laboured, and I remembered that sailors still sing in chorus while they
work, and even sing different songs according to what part of their work
they are doing. And a little while afterwards, when my sea journey was
over, the sight of men working in the English fields reminded me
again that there are still songs for harvest and for many agricultural
routines. And I suddenly wondered why if this were so it should be quite
unknown, for any modern trade to have a ritual poetry. How did people
come to chant rude poems while pulling certain ropes or gathering
certain fruit, and why did nobody do anything of the kind while
producing any of the modern things? Why is a modern newspaper never
printed by people singing in chorus? Why do shopmen seldom, if ever,
sing?

.....

If reapers sing while reaping, why should not auditors sing while
auditing and bankers while banking? If there are songs for all the
separate things that have to be done in a boat, why are there not songs
for all the separate things that have to be done in a bank? As the train
from Dover flew through the Kentish gardens, I tried to write a few
songs suitable for commercial gentlemen. Thus, the work of bank clerks
when casting up columns might begin with a thundering chorus in praise
of Simple Addition.

"Up my lads and lift the ledgers, sleep and ease are o'er. Hear the
Stars of Morning shouting: 'Two and Two are four.' Though the creeds and
realms are reeling, though the sophists roar, Though we weep and pawn
our watches, Two and Two are Four."

"There's a run upon the Bank--Stand away! For the Manager's a crank and
the Secretary drank, and the

Upper Tooting Bank
Turns to bay!
Stand close: there is a run
On the Bank.
Of our ship, our royal one, let the ringing legend run,
That she fired with every gun
Ere she sank."

.....

And as I came into the cloud of London I met a friend of mine who
actually is in a bank, and submitted these suggestions in rhyme to him
for use among his colleagues. But he was not very hopeful about the
matter. It was not (he assured me) that he underrated the verses, or in
any sense lamented their lack of polish. No; it was rather, he felt, an
indefinable something in the very atmosphere of the society in which we
live that makes it spiritually difficult to sing in banks. And I think
he must be right; though the matter is very