After the Summer 161 



about the forest or the lawn grow bolder as their 

 young have learned their lesson of self support. 

 These creatures irresponsibly live and die, and 

 each generation makes its own career. 



Thus we are not as the flowers of the field or 

 the birds of the air or the denizens of the trees and 

 the burrows, for some new element has entered 

 into us as we have evolved our nature and our 

 destiny. Not one spring, not one summer, not 

 one fall nay, not one winter, is our own. And 

 man has not only his labour and pains, for himself 

 and his successors, but he must bear the care of 

 the humbler creatures to whom he should be the 

 thought and the providence that preserves, since 

 in his growth he has been taught that no man 

 liveth or dieth unto himself. The responsibility 

 is limitless : 



u For so the whole round earth is every way 

 Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.&quot; 



The phenomena of ongoing life are endlessly 

 marvelous, and what man faints under, Nature 

 sustains with glorious triumph. Were these won 

 ders all made just for man s mere sustenance of 

 a physical life conditioned on this earth, how 

 wasted were these generous beauties ! But man 

 has other qualities that touch spheres beyond the 

 one he thinks he knows, and which yet he cannot 



K 



