THE GOLDEN DRUGGET
1918.
Primitive and essential things have great power to touch the heart of
the beholder. I mean such things as a man ploughing a field, or sowing
or reaping; a girl filling a pitcher from a spring; a young mother
with her child; a fisherman mending his nets; a light from a lonely
hut on a dark night.
Things such as these are the best themes for poets and painters, and
appeal to aught that there may be of painter or poet in any one of us.
Strictly, they are not so old as the hills, but they are more
significant and eloquent than hills. Hills will outlast them; but
hills glacially surviving the life of man on this planet are of as
little account as hills tremulous and hot in ages before the life of
man had its beginning. Nature is interesting only because of us. And
the best symbols of us are such sights as I have just mentioned--
sights unalterable by fashion of time or place, sights that in all
countries always were and never will not be.
It is true that in many districts nowadays there are elaborate new
kinds of machinery for ploughing the fields and reaping the corn. In
the most progressive districts of all, I daresay, the very sowing of
the grain is done by means of some engine, with better results than
could be got by hand. For aught I know, there is a patented invention
for catching fish by electricity.
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