From Pillar to Post 



earth which for two centuries has been 

 drowned. The corpse cannot be revivified, but 

 Nature does what she can. The sun dries the 

 sodden mass of mud ; the autumn leaves clothe 

 its nakedness. And so it is, I can stand where 

 my forbears stood in the dawn of colonial days 

 and see what they saw. The dead are still 

 dead, but the dead past returns to me. 



Who shall say when the waters of this little 

 brook began to babble ? This small stream, hid- 

 den by trees that no man ever saw, may have 

 been seeking an outlet to the river, when life 

 that long since outgrew its usefulness wandered 

 along it and slaked its thirst in silent, unsunned 

 pools. Nature can take us by the hand and lead 

 us backward as well as forward, if she will, and 

 so she did, to-day. I saw this trifling wrinkle 

 in the world's face, a wooded valley, tortuous, 

 long and deep, and as Nature would have it, 

 save the mud-plastered stretch that should have 

 been green. Man's necessities work havoc with 

 Nature's purposes. She accepts the change for 

 a time, but occasionally shows her resentment, 

 as when the storm washed away the dam. She 

 had accepted it here and the pond was very 

 pretty, but I could never forget that it was a 



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