ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD 



place, nor any muse whose dictation will not 

 sound like a phonograph. The paradox of 

 the situation lies in the fact that the more 

 civilized man becomes, the more he needs and 

 craves a great background of forest wildness, 

 to which he may return like a contrite 

 prodigal from the husks of an artificial life. 



Many of us know that indefinable and ir- 

 remediable ennui which is felt in the society 

 of a man or woman whose mind is intellectu- 

 ally "level and free from stones, half mow- 

 ing and half tillage," and the latter some- 

 times intensive a mind with no wild wood- 

 lands or rocky pastures, where one might 

 stumble on a bubbling spring of fancy or a 

 briar-rose of sentiment. Precisely the same 

 kind of ennui, only on a cosmic scale, we shall 

 feel if our wild woods, and the uneven coun- 

 try which is their vestibule, are little by little 

 abolished. 



When men have recognized that the forest 

 is a great standing army, divinely appointed 

 to protect the human race not only from 

 drought, flood, and famine, but from their 

 counterparts in the intellectual and spirit- 



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