Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/111

Rh us is between the rooted and the movable creature. Do they not live on us, eat us, consume our superfluity? We are vegetables—that root in the soil, and the tradesmen and artizans nibble and browse on us. The richer our leaf, the more succulent our juices, the more nutriment we supply to them. When they have eaten us down to the soil, they move off to other pastures and nibble and browse there. When we have recovered, and send up fresh shoots, back they come, munch, munch, munch. If one supply fails, others open. There is equipoise—I dare say there are twice as many hands employed in making matches and adhesive envelopes now, as there were of old chipping flints and making wafers."

"That may be, but the drying up of one spring before another opens must cause distress. Where is that other one, that the necessitous may drink of it? Ishmael was dying of thirst in the desert on his mother Hagar's lap, within a stone's throw of a well of which neither knew till it was shown them by an angel."

"Of course there is momentary distress, but the means of locomotion are now so great that every man can go about in quest of work. Things always right themselves in the end."

"They do not right themselves without the crushing and killing of some in the process. Tell me, papa, how is this to be explained? I have to-day encountered two poor creatures who have loved each other for twenty years, and are too abject in their poverty to be able even now to marry. No fault of either accounts for this. Accident, misfortune, divide them—such things ought not to be."

"But they are—they cannot be helped."

"They ought not to be—there must be fault somewhere. Either Providence in ruling destinies rules them crooked, or the social arrangements brought about by civilization are to blame."