The Denison review. [volume] (Denison, Iowa) 1867-current, 1900-01-12

with a delicate silver tracery, in some
mineral resembling leaves and branch
es. There on the fiat stone, on which
we o down and see it covered with
the fossil footprints Of great birds and
the beautiful skeleton of a fish. We
have often tried to picture in our mind
what the fossiled remains of creatures
must be like, and all the while we sat
on them. We have been SO blinded by
thinking and feeling that we have new
err seen the world.
The fiat plain has been to us a reach
Of monotonous red. We look at it,
and every handful of sand starts into
life. That wonderful people. the ants,
we learn to know; see them make war
and peace, play and work, and build
their huge palaces. And that smaller
people we make acquaintance with who
live in the flowers. The Ditto flower
has been for us a mere blur Of yellow.
We find its heart composed of a hun
dred perfect flowers, the homes of the
tiny black people with red stripes, who
move in and out in that little yellow
city. Every bluebelfMlas it's inhabitant.
Every day the "karroo" shows us a
new wonder sleeping in it's teeming
bosom. On III way to work we pause
and stand to see the ground spider
make it's trap, bury itself in the sand
and then wait for the falling in of it's
enemy. Farther on walks a horned
beetle, and near him starts open the
door of a spider, who peeps out care
fully and quickly pulls it down again.
On a "karroo'' bush a green fly is lay
ing her silver eggs. We carry them
home and see the shells pierced, the
spotted grub come out, turn to a green
fly and fit away.
We are not satisfied with what Ma
ture shows us and will see something
for ourselves. Under the white hen
we put a dozen eggs and break one
daily to see the white spot wax into
the chicken. We are not excited or
enthusiastic about it. But a man is
not to lay his throat open. He must
think of something. So we plant seeds
in rows on our dam wall and pull one
up daily to see how it goes with them.
Alladeen buried her wonderful stone,
and q golden palace sprang up at her
feet. We do far more. We put a
brown seed in the earth, and a living
thing starts out-starts upward-why,
no more than Alladeen can we say
starts upward, and does not desist till
it is higher than our heads, sparkling
with dew in the early morning, glitter
ing with yellow blossoms, shaking
brown seeds with little embryo souls
on to the ground. We look at it SOL
EMMY from the time it consists of two
leaves peeping above the ground and a
soft white root till we have to raise
our faces to look at it, but we find no
reason for that upward starting.
We look into the dead ducks and
lambs. In the evening we carry them
home, spread newspapers on the floor
and lie working with them till mid
night. With a startled feeling near
akin to ecstasy we open the lump of
flesh called a heart and find little doors
and strings inside. We feel them and
put the heart away, but every now and
then return to look and to feel them
again. Why we like them SO we can
hardly tell.
A gander browns itself in our dam.
We take it out and open it on the bank
and kneel. looking at it. Above are
the organs divided by delicate tissues;
below are the intestines artistically
curved in spiral form and each tier
covered by a delicate network of blood
vessels standing put red against the
faint blue background. Each branch
of the blood vessels is comprised Of a
trunk, bifurcating and rebifurcating
into the most delicate hairlike threads,
symmetrically arranged. We are
struck with its singular beauty. And,
moreover (and here we drop from our
kneeling into a sitting p%osture), this
also we remark-of that same exact
shape and outline Is our thorn tree
seen against the sky in midwilter; of
that shape also is delicate metallic
tracery between our rocks; in that
exact path does u water flow when
without a furrow we lead it from the
dam; SO shaped are the antlers Of the
horned beetle. How are these things
related that such deep union should
exist between them all? Is it chance,
or are they not all the fine branches
of one trunk, whose sap flows through
us all? That would explain it. We
nod over the gander's inside.
This thing we call existence, Is 1t
no a something which has its roots
far down below in the dark and it's
branches stretching out into the i'm
mensity above which we among the
branches cannot see? Not a chance
tumble, a living thing, a One. The
thought gives us intense satisfaction.
We cannot tell why.
We nod over the gander, then start
up suddenly, look into the blue sky,
throw the dead gander and the refuse
into the dan and go to work again.
And SO it ome to pass in time that
the earth ceases for us to be a welter-
ing chaos. We walk in the great hall
of life, looking up and round reveren-
TALLY. Nothing is despicable; all is
meaning full. Nothing is small; all
is part of a whole whose beginning and