example of the kind that befalls each one of us
daily:--

Some years ago, while journeying in the mountains of North Carolina, I
passed by a large number of 'coves,' as they call them there, or heads
of small valleys between the hills, which had been newly cleared and
planted. The impression on my mind was one of unmitigated squalor. The
settler had in every case cut down the more manageable trees, and left
their charred stumps standing. The larger trees he had girdled and
killed, in order that their foliage should not cast a shade. He had then
built a log cabin, plastering its chinks with clay, and had set up a
tall zigzag rail fence around the scene of his havoc, to keep the pigs
and cattle out. Finally, he had irregularly planted the intervals
between the stumps and trees with Indian corn, which grew among the
chips; and there he dwelt with his wife and babes--an axe, a gun, a few
utensils, and some pigs and chickens feeding in the woods, being the sum
total of his possessions.

The forest had been destroyed; and what had 'improved' it out of
existence was hideous, a sort of ulcer, without a single element of
artificial grace to make up for the loss of Nature's beauty. Ugly,
indeed, seemed the life of the squatter, scudding, as the sailors say,
under bare poles, beginning again away back where our first ancestors
started, and by hardly a single item the better off for all the
achievements of the intervening generations.

Talk about going back to nature! I said to myself, oppressed by the
dreariness, as I drove by. Talk of a country life for one's old age and
for one's children! Never thus, with nothing but the bare ground and
one's bare hands to fight the battle! Never, without the best spoils of
culture woven in! The beauties and commodities gained by the centuries
are sacred. They are our heritage and birthright. No modern person ought
to be willing to live a day in such a state of rudimentariness and
denudation.

Then I said to the mountaineer who was driving me, "What sort of people
are they who have to make these new clearings?" "All of us," he replied.
"Why, we ain't happy here, unless we are getting one of these coves
under cultivation." I instantly felt that I had been losing the whole
inward significance of the situation. Because to me the clearings spoke
of naught but denudation, I thought that to those whose sturdy arms and
obedient axes had made them they could tell no other story. But, when
_they_