But, thank God, we are beginning
to learn that unity is as much a law of life as selfish struggle,
and love a more vital force than avarice or lust of power or
place. A Wandering Carpenter knew it, and taught it, twenty
centuries ago.
"The next house beyond the ridge," said the toothless old woman,
pointing with a long finger, "is the Clarks'. You can't miss it,"
and I thought she looked at me oddly.
I had been walking briskly for some three miles, and it was with
keen expectation that I now mounted the ridge and saw the farm
for which I was looking, lying there in the valley before me. It
was altogether a wild and beautiful bit of country--stunted
cedars on the knolls of the rolling hills, a brook trailing its
way among alders and willows down a long valley, and shaggy old
fields smiling in the sun. As I came nearer I could see that the
only disharmony in the valley was the work (or idleness) of men.
A broken mowing-machine stood in the field where it had been left
the summer before, rusty and forlorn, and dead weeds marked the
edges of a field wherein the spring ploughing was now only half
done. The whole farmstead, indeed, looked tired. As for the house
and barn, they had reached that final stage of decay in which the
best thing that could be said of them was that they were
picturesque.
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