206 THE FACE OF THE FIELDS 



and criminally to rob, despoil, and leave for dead 

 these eleven thousand acres of natural clam gar- 

 den on the Massachusetts coast % If a vast ir- 

 rigating work is the divine in man, by the same 

 token are the barren mountain slopes, the polluted 

 and shrunken rivers, the ravished and abandoned 

 plough-lands, and these lifeless flats of the shore 

 the devils in him — here where no reclaiming is 

 necessary, where the rain cometh down from 

 heaven, and twice a day the tides flow in from the 

 hills of the sea ! 



There are none of us here along the Atlantic 

 coast who do not think with joy of that two-hun- 

 dred-and-fifty-thousand-acre garden new-made 

 yonder in the distant West. It means more, and 

 cheaper, and still fairer fruit for us of the East ; 

 more musk-melons, too, we hope; but we know 

 that it cannot mean more clams. Yet the clam, 

 also, is good. Man cannot live on irrigated fruit 

 alone. He craves clams — clams as juicy as a 

 Redlands Bartlett, but fresh with the salty savor 

 of wind-blown spray. 



And he shall have them, for the clam farm — 

 the restocked, restored flat of earlier times — has 

 passed the stage of theory and experiment, being 



