378 READINGS IN BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE 



THE VANDALS * 

 ANGELO PATRI 



It was Sunday evening and the cars were filled with returning holiday 

 makers. Every seat held its quota of weary, sleep-beset children, and from 

 their relaxed hands drooped thousands of dead and dying wild flowers. 

 When the car stopped at their corner their guardians pulled them up and 

 dragged them out and the flowers strewed the passageway. 



One sleepy towhead clutched a little tin pail, and as she was dragged 

 along the pail caught somehow and overturned. A foot kicked it along 

 and its contents were scattered about. I looked at them and saw that the 

 child had gathered a score or more of white violet plants. Now they lay 

 smashed beyond recognition on the floor of a dirty trolley car. 



I knew the spot where those violets had grown. There is a little dark 

 brown wood pool in which tall trees stand, each rising from a throne of 

 velvet green moss. Out of the moss grow the tiny white violets and the 

 "wind lily of the valley." It is a fair^^ place, a place that catches one's breath 

 by its exquisite solemn beauty. And the child had tried to gather the beauty 

 and carry it home in the little pail. 



Why didn't the grown person with her tell her that she could never do 

 that? Why didn't she tell her that the beauty was a thing of sky and sun- 

 shine and color and fragrance and water and wood and could be carried 

 away only in her heart? 



Why didn't she tell her that she was carrying death to something that 

 the Creator had instilled with life that it might make glad the spaces of 

 a spirit? Didn't the mother know? I'm afraid she didn't, because she left a 

 bundle of dosrwood in the seat behind her! 



People with gardens, gardeners who cherish beautiful grounds in great 

 estates, park superintendents who fight to preserve a little of the beauty 

 of the earth that its people may see and know it, cry out against the van- 

 dalism of the children. 



Better cry out against the vandalism of their elders, who teach them that 

 flowers are to be gathered regardless. The children only follow their par- 

 ents' example. 



There are some people who cannot bear to see anything lovely without 

 longing to possess it. Flowers cannot defend themselves and fall victims 

 to the greed of possession. Women who could not bear to kill a noxious 

 fly will slaughter a bank of wild flowers and go carelessly on their way. 



There must be a sad spiritual lack about such people, and the saddest 

 part of it is their passing it along to the children. 



Teach the children to look at the beauty of the flowers and keep their 

 hands off. Show them the difl'erence between the beautiful little flower 



• Reprinted by special permission of Angelo Patri. 



