LEAF AND TENDRIL 



that woman which resulted in a union for life, and, 

 so far as their conscious wills were concerned, the 

 meeting was a matter of chance; but if we could 

 see all the forces that have been at work to bring 

 them together, we should discover that there was 

 no more chance about it than about the conjunc- 

 tion of two planets in the evening sky. 



Indeed, our lives are evidently the result of such 

 a play and interplay of forces from far and from 

 near, from the past and from the present, from the 

 earth and from the heavens, forces so subtle and 

 constant and so beyond the reach of our analysis, 

 that one is half converted to the claims of astro- 

 logy, and inclined to believe that the fate of each 

 of us was written in the heavens before the foun- 

 dations of the world. 



Ill 

 Don't you suppose that if the trees in the forest, 

 the grass in the field, the fruit in the orchard, could 

 for a moment be conscious and speak, they would 

 each and all say. There is evil here also, there is 

 crime, there is sin, there is struggle, defeat, and death 

 also? One plant could complain that there is an- 

 other plant stealing from it, or trespassing upon its 

 territory and robbing it; another is being crowded 

 to the wall, another being dwarfed by its bigger and 

 more sturdy neighbor. Cut down a tree in the forest, 

 and in the spring a half dozen or more shoots start 

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