198 THE FACE OF THE FIELDS 



ends of the earth, but is making them concerned 

 also for the future prosperity of the Farther-Off. 



Priests and prophets we have had heretofore. 

 "Woodman, woodman, spare that tree," they 

 have wailed. And the flying chips were the 

 woodman's swift response. The woodman has 

 not heard the poet's prayer. But he is hearing 

 the American public's command to let the sap- 

 ling alone ; and he is beginning to heed. It is a 

 new appeal, this for the sapling; there is sound 

 scientific sense in it, and good business sense, too. 

 We shall save our forests, our watersheds, and 

 rivers ; we shall conserve for time to come our 

 ores and rich deposits ; we shall reclaim the last 

 of our western deserts, adopt the most forlorn of 

 our eastern farms ; we shall herd our whales of 

 the Atlantic, our seals of the Pacific, number and 

 multiply our truant schools of mackerel that 

 range the waters of the sea; just as we shall re- 

 stock with clams the waste, sandy shores of the 

 sea, shores which in the days of Massasoit were 

 as fruitful as Eden, but which through years of 

 digging and no planting have become as barren 

 as the bloodless sands of the Sahara. 



It is a solemn saying that one will reap, in the 



