The Ethics of the Dust

The Ethics of the Dust is by John Ruskin and has the subtitle Ten Lectures To Little Housewives On The Elements Of Crystallization. The contents list names lectures titled The Valley of Diamonds, The Pyramid Builders and The Crystal Life, among others. The dedication is to the real little housewives, whose gentle listening and thoughtful questioning enabled the writer to write this book.

The list headed Personae includes an old lecturer of incalculable age, Florrie and Isabel, among others. When Florrie asks, Oh, where? Tell me about it, the speaker marked L. replies that in the real valley there are diamonds covering the grass in showers every morning, instead of dew. A character named Lily describes taking some of the bits of stick that ants were carrying and carrying them forward a little, but instead of being pleased they left them directly and ran about looking quite angry and frightened. A quoted passage says that for the ounce of slime which we had by political economy of competition, we have, by political economy of co-operation, a sapphire, an opal, and a diamond, set in the midst of a star of snow.