Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/32

24 organisation, I will undertake to say that all who help in this good work will never regret it; that as our monument gradually rises from the ground-work into something like perfection, hours and hours of pleasurable toil will have replaced many a moment which would have been occupied less profitably, and if I know anything of the ups and downs of life, many a moment of trouble and regret. Give me, then, I pray you, the mandate I ask at your hands; signalise my personally weak presidency by making it scientifically strong.

Ladies and gentlemen, in the land of Eutopia—as in that London which Mr. Morris has dreamed about in his beautiful dreams—all things are done for love. We folk-lorists do things for love of folk-lore, and we find each other thinking good things of each other, and saying what capital people we all are. But outside the charmed band exists a hard and cruel world, who pretend to say that they cannot live upon love, even upon the love that folk-lore produces for the human species. That outside world demands money—money for postages, for travelling, for printing, and for that awfully portentous item, "miscellaneous." Therefore, it behoves folk-lorists—or, at least, the Folk-lore Society collectively—to possess a banker, a treasurer, and a cash balance. I believe if we do good work we shall soon possess the inestimable blessing of a good cash balance. It is hopeless to expect that a cash balance and a satisfied treasurer will precede good work—it is putting the cart before the horse. The Council, as you have heard in the Report, is attempting much, and I am happy to say that two volunteers already, without any suggestion but their own desires, have asked me to give them some work to do, and they must pardon me if I mention their names—Miss Dendy and Miss Richardson. A suggestion I have to make is that the Council should place some of its accumulation of work into the hands of small committees of members, not on the Council, perhaps presided over by a member of the Council; and I would