But I waive my belief in this matter for the time. I will assume that they become more refined and moral persons, and that idleness is in future to be the mother of all good. But observe, I repeat, the power of your machine is only in enabling them to be idle. It will not enable them to live better than they did before, nor to live in greater numbers. Get your heads quite clear on this matter. Out of so much ground, only so much living is to be got, with or without machinery. You may set a million of steam-ploughs to work on an acre, if you like—out of that acre only a given number of grains of corn will grow, scratch or score it as you will. So that the question is not at all whether, by having more machines, more of you can live. No machine will increase the possibilities of life. It only increases the possibilities of idleness. Suppose, for instance, you could get the oxen on your plough driven by a goblin, who would ask for no pay, not even his beer,—well, your furrow will take no more seeds than if you had held the stilts yourself. But, instead of holding them, you sit, I presume, on a bank beside the field, under an eglantine—watch the goblin at his work, and read poetry. Meantime, your wife in the house has also got a goblin to weave and wash for her; and she is lying on the sofa, revelling in Stephen Crane’s lines. Now, as I said, I don’t believe you would be happier so, but I am willing to believe it; only, since you are already such brave machinists, show me at least one or two places where you are happier. Let me see one small example of approach to this seraphic condition. I can show you examples, millions of them, of happy people made happy by their own industry. Farm after farm I can show you in Bavaria, Switzerland, the Tyrol, and such other places, where men and women are perfectly happy and good, without any iron servants. Show me, therefore, some Kansas or Ohio family happier than these. Or bring me—for I am not inconvincible by any kind of evidence—bring me the testimony of an Illinois family or two to their increased felicity. Or if you cannot do so much as that, can you convince even themselves of it? They are perhaps happy, if only they knew how happy they were. Virgil thought so, long ago, of simple rustics; but at present your steam-propelled rustics are crying out that they are anything else than happy, and that they regard their boasted progress “in the light of a monstrous Sham.” There are three Material things, not only useful, but essential to Life. No one knows how to live till he has got them. These are, Pure Air, Water and Earth. There are three Immaterial things, not only useful, but essential to Life. No one knows how to live till he has got them also. These are, Admiration, Hope and Love.