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Dyke called a few evenings later, after a similar interview to the one with Grace, she left the battlefield a wiser soldier than when she entered it, for Kate had so beautifully proven her religious earnestness, and more than all had shown such a Christ-like spirit, that the "sword was beaten into a plowshare and the spear into a pruning hook."
"What does it matter to me, after all," he continued, "if his only object is to overthrow M. Colbert? And what else can he be after?" And D'Artagnan rubbed his forehead that fertile land, whence the plowshare of his nails had turned up so many and such admirable ideas in his time.
Preparation was like a plowshare, although it turned up nothing valuable, and stimulated esthetic and emotional ardor. In a dim way he felt God near, but he did not learn to fling the arms of the soul in faith around the cross of Christ. Later the revelation he found in Plato removed him farther from boyhood. He fell in love with gray Gothic churches, painted glass, organ lofts, etc.
But "curiosity"! He may be there from mere "curiosity"! Curiosity to witness the success of the execution of his own plan of murder! The very walls of a court-house ought not to stand, the plowshare should run through the ground it stands on, where such an argument could find toleration.
If the red plowshare of war must pass through the soil of the nations, may it bury forever the seeds of oppression and injustice, and sow for future generations the seeds of liberty, intelligence and religion! Moreover, an overmastering passion is the secret of all eminence in scholarship.
It is the enclosure, nearest to the cottage, and seems now to be a pasture, and a rather remarkably unfertile one. A little farther on, the ground was whitened with an immense number of daisies daisies, daisies everywhere; and in answer to my inquiry, the driver said that this was the field where Burns ran his plowshare over the daisy.
"Cutting and keen are the words of Truth, and like a burnished plowshare, it enters the unsightly field and uproots everything in its path. We now do not mention sickness, because his mind is so unsettled and his active beliefs of disease all on the surface, so we gently soothe him into forgetfulness of his trouble, and quietly assure him there is no occasion for alarm of any kind.
He tapped the big red ox with a pointed stick, the two beasts settled their massive shoulders to the collar, and with a soft greasy swish and a crackle of half-burnt stubble the moldboard rolled aside the loam. I too felt that this was a great occasion. At last I was working my own land; with the plowshare I was opening the gate of an unknown future; and my fingers tingled as I jerked the lines.
Like an enormous ram, it plowed the soil to a depth of twenty feet, uprooting acres of the immense trees like stubble turned over by the plowshare. The uproar was so awful that for an instant the coolest of us lost our self-control. Yet we knew that we had not the fraction of a second to waste. The breaking of the banks had caused the water again rapidly to rise about us.
So long, so long, has man pursued these ancient tasks; so long ago was he urging the plowshare through the furrow, so long ago the sower went forth to sow; so long ago have there been barns and byres, granaries and threshing-floors, mills and vineyards; so long has there been milking of cows, and herding of sheep and swine.
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