The Black Swans 



prospect fair was blasted. Some of our 

 finest plants were hopelessly broken 

 by the driving storms of May. Limbs 

 were wrenched from the maples, and 

 torrential rains drowned various birds 

 unable to save themselves from the 

 fury of the elements. Those trying 

 days though now are passed, and, 

 supposedly, the fittest have survived 

 and inherited the earth. I wonder is 

 this always so? We make a lot of 

 fuss of this business of trying at any 

 cost to keep up with the procession 

 in the struggle for place, precedence or 

 a mere existence! As if life were a 

 matter of years only. May not that 

 boy who died so gloriously today in the 

 fateful valley of the Marne have lived 

 to far more purpose than the seedy 

 specimen of humanity that begged 

 this morning at the cottage door? And 

 yet another query presses. Is that 

 straggling stalk of corn, trying in vain 

 to make something out of itself in that 

 hard clay soil back there along the 



[48] 



