CHAPTER X 
CLIMBING PLANTS 
THE vine has served rhetoricians ever since the 
Dark Ages as a type of clinging helplessness and 
utter dependence. It has symbolized the condi- 
tion of woman under the old régime, before she 
entered the learned professions and the business 
world, donned short skirts, mounted the bicycle, and 
wrote herself down Woman. Therefore, we learn, 
with some surprise, that the vine, like many a 
woman in unreconstructed societies, is only appar- 
ently relieved of the burdens of existence, and 
that it works as hard for its living as the ‘‘sturdy 
oak,” to which it clings. 
The charitable soul is now and then defrauded 
by a ne’er-do-well, who puts into his schemes 
for the avoidance of work an amount of astuteness, 
adroitness, and energy which would win success in 
some legitimate field of labor. 
Vines, when one studies their habits, are some- 
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