386 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



his wife is just as bad as he is, then he 

 has crossed the line into new oceans, 

 under new skies, and has found the real 

 thing. Sounds like poetry, but the boss 

 says it isn't. He says that the idea be- 

 hind it is just as big and as real as a 

 sugar pine." 



The youngster was provoked. "I 

 think that all of you are crazy !"' He 

 walked into the supervisor's office that 

 afternoon and explained that the work 

 was unsuited to a person of his attain- 

 ments. He never knew exactly how it 

 happened, but he signed a resignation 

 blank almost before he knew it, and 

 went back to Peauntville. 



The rangers followed his career for 

 several years with joyous interest. He 

 clerked, he took money at a circus win- 

 dow, he tried newspaper work, he went 

 to the mines, he was everything by 

 turns, but nothing long. But still one 

 sometimes hears a ranger say to an- 

 other while they are fighting fire to- 

 gether down in some hot gulch: "Say, 

 Jack, I wish I had a plate of ice cream." 

 And Jack responds : "I wish I could sit 

 in the Peauntville park and bear the 

 band play." 



Thus the miserable failure of this 

 youth has come to be used by loyal men 

 to the betterment of the Service ; not of 

 set purpose, but none the less surely 

 has it become mortar in the walls of the 

 Temple. 



Inspectors tell me sometimes that the 

 rangers are dififerent in, say, Oregon, 

 from those in New Mexico. I cannot 

 think that thev are essentially dififerent. 

 I think that when the Chief goes around, 

 he sees the essential unities, not the 

 minor differences; he sees that the 



Service is a spiritual force that lifts 

 men out of themselves, and makes them 

 living "spokes in the wheel," living 

 wheels in a living engine. He sees 

 men finding themselves, then giving 

 themselves, not to him as leader, but to 

 a Service. And it is not always the 

 strong, the refined, the highly educated 

 who achieve the most complete loyalty 

 to something far greater than them- 

 selves. The Chief sees, I think, that 

 whoever, great or small, high or low, 

 from guard to head of division, who 

 holds back anything of himself in either 

 body or soul is not wholly loyal to the 

 Service. And, knowing this, his heart 

 especially goes out — not to me who 

 write of these things, not to any of 

 those who rule as best they may, from 

 the seats of the mighty, but to the rank 

 and file ; to the plain Americans, so sim- 

 ple, so in earnest, so troubled about 

 their forms, their reports, their maps; 

 even so much more anxious about 

 Bane's hogs, the shakes for old man 

 Castro's cabin, and those miners up in 

 Tamarack Gulch. 



For the Service grows according to 

 the degree in which it inspires the plain 

 everyday people. It not only goes on 

 with increasing energy, but some of its 

 force passes forever into the shaping of 

 greater human issues than even waters 

 and forests. For these, our loved 

 guards and rangers and their wives and 

 children are learning to think and to act 

 more and more helpfully for the bet- ^ 

 terment of the communities in which 

 they live. To this the communities are 

 learning to respond in like measure. 

 There we can safely leave it. 



