ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



of leaf and flower is repeated in the plants and for- 

 ests, and every fall the work is undone. The great, 

 the noble, the heroic, youth, age, manhood, woman- 

 hood, fail and disappear, and still the game goes on. 

 The rivers drain the hills and mountains, and still 

 they never run dry. Spring and summer do not ex- 

 haust the fertility of Nature. The rivers carry the 

 soil into the sea, but they do not carry it off 

 the globe. We cannot defertilize the earth. What 

 the seas lose, the clouds gain; what the clouds lose, 

 the earth gains; what the hills lose, the sea gains; 

 and so the circle is complete. 



Nature has her own economies that answer to our 

 own. In the use of means to an end, as in the living 

 world, there must be economy of time, of space, of 

 power; there must be adjustments, compensations, 

 and so on. In the tropics vegetation takes its time. 

 No hurry; the heat does not fail. In the temperate 

 zone there is less time, and the pace of vegetation is 

 faster. In the frigid zone it is faster still, the time is 

 brief; there is no prodigality of leaf and stalk and 

 flower; hurry up is the cry. The stalk is short, the 

 flowering is brief, the goal is the seed which must be 

 matured. In our climate, if a plant gets a later start, 

 or is cut down and compelled to bloom again, — 

 for example, the burdock, — how it hastens, how it 

 pushes out its seed-vessels from the main stalk! 

 The late fall dandelions do not indulge in long 

 stalks; they bloom close to the ground and develop 



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