SIGNS OF AUTUMN 247 



great number of human beings strong and sym- 

 metrical like stately trees, but trees in whose 

 shade are no slender stems. There are kindly 

 human voices that fade like those of passing birds, 

 and are never renewed in the plaint of infancy. 



But while so many people live singly because 

 they have not the means to otherwise maintain a 

 certain social position, so long will the future of 

 the human family be left in the control of the bad 

 and careless, born and bred in a city vortex of 

 vice and misery, or in a country sty, whence they 

 are pressed by sheer force of numbers to crowd 

 the outer world and take the place of worthier 

 men. For how many more generations will people 

 devote themselves to snobbery, even to the extent 

 of physical extinction? And what is their reward? 

 Nothingness. 



The starling on the housetop knows a wiser 

 scheme. He would say that every inch of this 

 fair world is worth fighting for. And this is the 

 message of the trees. Where man seeks to im- 

 prove on Nature and to do away with the combat 

 of numbers and vital selection, Nature laughs at 

 him, enervates him, and wipes him from her pic- 



