The earth is a large place, but I believe that nowhere else on the earth’s surface can a harder-worked couple be found than Hodge and his wife. And what makes their hard lot still harder is the fact that they are the only workers who never have a fête or a holiday. Our climate is such that neither in mid-winter, nor in mid-summer, need labour be intermitted; and our agriculture is so conducted that it cannot. The consequence is that Hodge is held to labour all the year round. And, if he could now and then be spared, nature here imposes upon him so many wants, and so inexorably exacts attention to them, that he could not afford a day’s idleness from the time when, being about eight years old, he began to scare crows, till the day when, worn out with toil and weather, he will be laid in the churchyard: he must be in harness every day, and all day long. If, then, this couple have some failings (how could it be otherwise?) be to those unavoidable failings a little kind. Think, too, that it would be strange if such a life did not engender some virtues, and to those virtues be fair and appreciative. They are not afraid of any kind, or of any amount, of work. They don’t see much use in complaining. They let other folk alone. They are self-reliant within their narrow sphere. They think there must be a better world than this has been to them. In the meantime they are thankful that they can work, and earn their own, and their children’s, bread. And here we have the true nursery of the nation. The schooling is hard, but without it we should not be what we are. It forms the stuff out of which Englishmen are made. It is the stuff that has made America and Australia, and is giving to our language and race predominance in the world. Our mental and bodily fibre is strengthened by having had to pass through the Hodge stage. And now we have to set Achmed by the side of Hodge. Poor Hodge! How can there be any comparison between things so dissimilar? Achmed is a child of the sun, that sun his forefathers worshipped, and whose symbol he sees on the old temples. Every day of his life, and all day long, he has seen him, Not as in northern climes, obscurely bright, But one unclouded blaze of living light,