NEW ENGLAND 219 



more pliable and alive than rocks and metals, 

 they could not exist. Even the appearance and 

 qualities of most chemical combinations which 

 seem arbitrarily and permanently fixed, when 

 combined and placed under certain new environ- 

 ments, may develop unsuspected characters and 

 tendencies. Everybody knows that the charac- 

 ters of iron are more fixed than those of plants 

 and animals. The characters and habits of iron, 

 lime, soda, and hundreds of other chemical sub- 

 stances and compounds can be fully depended 

 upon; they will act according to their inherent 

 qualities. But these same chemical substances 

 from which animals and plants are formed are so 

 numerous and in such diverse combinations that 

 their behavior is vastly more complicated and 

 uncertain. The structures which we call plants 

 and animals make use of the chemical forces of 

 nearly every substance so far discovered in the 

 universe. 



Nature goes on giving birth to new nations, 

 new peoples, which live their lives and disappear, 

 to be replaced by others and others which follow, 

 as far as we know, forever, or as long as this 

 planet retains the conditions necessary to human 

 and national life. 



A good heredity from a clean upright ancestry 

 is more to be desired than all the titles, honors 



