208 UNDER THE OPEN SKY 



BEGGAR-TICK 



Innate depravity makes them grow along 

 the path, you say. You forget. That is 

 looking at it from the wrong side again. 

 Look at it from their stand-point. You 

 see they want their children to grow up in 

 better surroundings than they did, — where 

 there is less crowding and a likelier chance 

 to make a living. So they send them off 

 hanging to each passer-by, hoping better 

 things for them. We are only doing our 

 part in the play, first when we carried them 

 along, and now as we sit here on this fence 

 and pick them off. Look at one of them. 

 How splendidly it is fitted for its work. The 

 seed part is ordinary enough, but these two 

 prongs, with their back-pointing barbs, do 

 the work. Now let us go ahead. There 

 you go, jumping into another patch. Well, 

 that is the patch some one planted last year, 

 in just the way we have set out another crop 

 for some one to jump into next fall. Of 

 course the beggar-ticks did not give their 

 seed that shape for the purpose of catching 

 you. They were meant to catch into the 



