The concessionaires, eager as they were to work in the vineyard, could hardly be expected to go forward until the general public should take something of the burden off their hands. It was under these circumstances that the Manatasara Syndicate and its offspring the company stood in the spring of 1910. Put in terms of Eternal Life, the shares in the new company of the Manatasara Syndicate which was to uplift so many poor negroes and to free so many human souls, were more precious than pearl or ruby and above the price of chrysoprase,[3] but in the cold terms of our mortal markets this month of April found them utterly unsaleable. Yet the capital required was small, one considerable purchase would have been enough to start the sluggish stream; and if it be asked why, under these circumstances, Mr. Hatton did not use his considerable financial influence to obtain the first subscriptions, the answer is that he was far too high-minded to persuade any man, even for the noblest of ideals, to the smallest risk for which he might later seem responsible. As to his own means, ardent as was his enthusiasm for the cause of our black brothers, he owed it to his wife, to his bright-eyed boy, and to his aged father-in-law, Sir Charles Hatton of Hatton Hall, who was penniless, to risk no portion of the family fortune in any speculation no matter how deserving. The public, though their ears were ringing with the name of Manatasara, and though the Press spoke of little else, held back; there was an interval--a very short one--during which the reconstruction of the whole affair was seriously considered in secret, when the Hand which will so often be observed in these pages, visibly moved for the benediction of Mr. Clutterbuck and of the great Empire which he was destined to serve.