et on together, and I
think I am of more importance than you. If nettles and thistles grow in
my cabbage-garden, I don't try to persuade them to grow into cabbages. I
just dig them up. I don't hate them; but I feel somehow that they
mustn't hinder me with my cabbages, and that I must put them away; and
so, my poor friend, I am sorry for you, but I am afraid you must
swing.'

PARABLE OF THE BREAD-FRUIT TREE.

It was after one of those heavy convulsions which have divided era from
era, and left mankind to start again from the beginning, that a number
of brave men gathered together to raise anew from the ground a fresh
green home for themselves. The rest of the surviving race were
sheltering themselves amidst the old ruins, or in the caves on the
mountains, feeding on husks and shells; but these men with clear heads
and brave hearts ploughed and harrowed the earth, and planted seeds, and
watered them, and watched them; and the seeds grew and shot up with the
spring, but one was larger and fairer than the rest, and the other
plants seemed to know it, for they crawled along till they reached the
large one; and they gathered round it, and clung to it, and grew into
it; and soon they became one great stem, with branching roots feeding it
as from many fountains. Then the men got great heart in them when they
saw that, and they laboured more bravely, digging about it in the hot
sun, till at last it became great and mighty, and its roots went down
into the heart of the earth, and its branches stretched over all the
plain.

Then many others of mankind, when they saw the tree was beautiful, came
down and gathered under it, and those who had raised it received them
with open arms, and they all sat under its shade together, and gathered
its fruits, and made their homes there, rejoicing in its loveliness. And
ages passed away, and all that generation passed away, and still the
tree grew stronger and fairer, and their children's children watched it
age after age, as it lived on and flowered and seeded. And they said in
their hearts, the tree is immortal--it will never die. They took no care
of the seed; the scent of the flowers and the taste of the sweet fruit
was all they thought of: and the winds of heaven, and the wild birds,
and the beasts of the field caught the stray fruits and seed-dust, and
bore the seed away, and scattered it in far-off soils.

And by-and-by, at a great great age, the tree at last began to cease to