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One finds a bare and sterile space, from which the hardy chickweed can scarcely gain the sustenance for timorous sproutings; a few outcropping rocks; a series of transverse gullies here and there, washed down to deep indentations; above the whole a stretch of burnt, broken timber that goes by the name of "fire-scald," and is a relic of the fury of the fire which was "set out" in the woods with the mission to burn only the leaves and undergrowth, and which, in its undisciplined strength, transcended its instructions, as it were, and destroyed great trees.
It was a bourgeoning, most miraculous, in those spots of the west, a new Europa, where soldiers sprang up immediately upon the sowing, like the sproutings of Cadmus' dragon's teeth, to fight one another and to build strongholds that should some day be cities, even as Cadmea, the fortress of the "Spartoi," became the city of Thebes.
I imagine that the Educational Man with the Hoe is responsible for a good deal of the loss. In his desire for clean culture he treats any sproutings of the faculty divine as mere weeds, if they come up between the rows. If the Educational Man with the Hoe is to be feared, the Educational Man with the Pruning Shears is an equal menace. There is an art, once highly esteemed, called topiary.
"If the tree fall towards the South, or towards the North, In the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be." The meaning of such a proverb is surely plain enough. Death's action is irrevocable. As it meets a man it leaves him. His plans and schemes lie as incapable of development as the fallen tree is incapable of new sproutings.
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