Page:Anthony John (IA anthonyjohn00jero).pdf/285

 pleasures can be purchased for little more than health and comradeship. The cricket bat, the tennis racket, the push bike, the leaky boat that one bought for a song and had the fun of patching up and making good; even that crown of the young world's desire, the motor-cycle itself—these and their kindred were not the things for which one need to sell one's soul. Education depended upon the scholar not the school. Was the future welfare of our children helped by our being rich? or hindered?

Suppose we brought up our children not to believe in riches, not to be afraid of poverty: not to be afraid of love in a six-roomed house, not to believe that they were bound to be just twice as happy in a house containing twelve, and thereby save themselves the fret and frenzy of trying to get there: the bitterness and heart break of those who never reached it. The love of money, the belief in money, was it not the root of nine-tenths of the world's sorrow? Suppose one taught one's children not to fall down and worship it, not to sacrifice to it their youth and health and joy. Might they not be better off—in a quite material way?

It occurred to her suddenly that she had not as yet thought about it from the religious point of view. She laughed. It had always been said