THE NEW EARTH 



barrenness save here and there where appeared 

 a leafless tree still bearing some show of yel- 

 low fruit, a tree not quite dead, and struggling 

 with all a plant's silent heroism to ward off its 

 doom. 



One side of the road had had water and still 

 used it, year following year, and it was a gar- 

 den ; the other side, sixty feet away, had had 

 water, had profited by it till its trees were 

 large and thrifty, had then been abandoned by 

 some thriftless owner ; it was traveling at 

 steady speed back to the desert. 



No human being is prepared to say that he 

 knows the preciousness of water until he 

 knows the desert. It is more than a precious 

 thing, it is a great elemental force second to 

 no other in the universe ; indeed, where shall its 

 equal be found for wideness of scope and 

 influence ? 



But see how the period of the New Earth 

 is transforming those waste places! Scarce a 

 generation ago, the dotted lines of the Great 

 American Desert encircling the haunt of 

 death; today, divided into rich states, while 

 the national government, realizing that the 

 only thing needful to make this desert blos- 



236 



