CACTUS AND GKEASE-WOOD 



129 



along to destroy it ? Not at all. The good 

 goddess has a hand that builds up. Yes ; and 

 she has another hand that takes down. The 

 marvellous skill of the one has its complement, 

 its counterpart, in the other. Block by block 

 she takes apart the mosaic with just as much 

 deftness as she put it together. 



Those first twenty years of our life we were 

 allowed to sap blood and strength from our sur- 

 roundings ; the last twenty years of our life our 

 surroundings are allowed to sap blood and 

 strength from us. It is Nature's plan and it is 

 carried out without any feeling. With the same 

 indifferent spirit that she planted in us an eye 

 to see or an ear to hear, she afterward plants a 

 microbe to breed and a cancer to eat. She in 

 herself is both growth and decay. The virile 

 and healthy things of the earth are hers ; and 

 so, too, are disease, dissolution, and death. The 

 flower and the grass spring up, they fade, they 

 wither ; and Nature neither rejoices in the life 

 nor sorrows in the death. She is neither good 

 nor evil ; she is only a great law of change that 

 passeth understanding. The gorgeous pagean- 

 try of the earth with all its beauty, the life 

 thereon with its hopes and fears and struggles, 

 and we a part of the universal whole, are brought 



Growth and 

 decay. 



Nature's 

 plan. 



