But what are
we going to do with this blindness of human beings as to what they are
fit for,--when they go, or are forced to go, stumbling along the wrong
path all their lives? Why, the bitterest prayers that God bears are from
men who think they have lost time in the world. The lowest matter alive,
the sponges, _fungi_, know what they have to do, and are blessed in the
doing, while we--Did you think the Socialist helped the matter? Men
needed thousand years' education to make their schemes practicable; they
ignored all this blindness, all selfishness, and overgrowth of the
passions: no wonder these facts knobbed themselves up against their
system, and so, in every instance it crumbled to pieces. The things are
facts, and here; there is no use in denying that; and it is a fact, too,
that almost every life seems a wasted failure, compared with what it
might have been. Such hard, grimy problems there are in life! They
weaken the eyes that look long at them: stories hard to understand, like
that of this old machinist, Joe Starke.
But over yonder, how cool and shady it is on that sweep of green! that
rests one so thoroughly, in eyes and brain! The quiet shadows ebb and
flow over the uncut grass; every hazy form or color is beyond art, true
and beautiful, being fresh from God; there are countless purpled vines
creeping out from the earth under that grass; the air trembles with the
pure spring healing and light; the gray-barked old elms wrestle, and
knot their roots underground, clutching down at the very thews and
sinews of the earth, and overhead unfold their shivering delicate leaves
fresh in the sunlight to catch the patter of the summer rain when it
comes.
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