LEAF AND TENDRIL 



must be fought for them. All these cultivated plants 

 are handicapped by a burden the wild things do not 

 bear ; the wild things are mainly bent only upon self- 

 propagation: to this end their seeds are small 

 and numerous ; but the cultivated grains and vege- 

 tables bear a burden of food for man, aside from 

 the germ necessary to their propagation. Wild 

 rice is a lean, savage, hirsute product compared 

 with the cultivated varieties; but the potato and 

 the onion and the pippin — what a burden of 

 starch and of other elements each bears, in contrast 

 with the wild species ! 



Evil comes to the fruit tree in the orchard in the 

 shape of frost that nips the fruit buds, or of worms 

 that eat its foliage, or in the shape of birds that cut 

 out the heart of the blossom, or in the shape of 

 insects that lay their eggs in the baby fruit, or in 

 the shape of fungus growths that fasten upon it and 

 dwarf it or mar it. Evil threatens and sooner or 

 later comes to everything that lives. Evil in this 

 sense is a necessary part of the living universe; 

 there is no escape from it. A world of competition, 

 of diverse and opposed interests, is a world of 

 struggle, of defeat, of death. 



After the ice has been all nicely formed in the 

 river, a miracle of crystallic beauty and perfection, 

 the winds or the tides break it up and bring chaos 

 to it. But the cold continues, the ice-packs freeze 

 together, or new ice forms, the ruin of the first 

 278 



