ind of its own
left; then bumped round by careless glaciers until it didn't care where
it came to rest; and at last, after a few hundred million years of stony
unconcern for its ultimate fate, here it had been drawn by the cunning
hand of man sprang into the complex mechanism of our industrial human
scramble.

That is to say, this boulder I speak of, the size of a city hall, lying
there in noble neglect since long before wise old water animals were
warning their children that this here fool talk about how you could go up
out of the water and walk round on dry land would get folks into trouble,
because how could a body breathe up there when there wasn't any water to
breathe in? And the fools that tried it would soon find out; and serve
'em right! Well, I mean to say, this boulder that had lain inert and
indifferent while the ages wrought man from a thing of one cell--and not
much of a cell at that--bore across that face of it nearest the winding
trail, a lettered appeal, as from one man to another. The letters were
large and neatly done in white paint and the brushwork was recent. And
the letters said, with a good deal of pathos, it seemed to me:

WAGNER'S SYLVAN GLEN, ONLY THIRTY-TWO MILES. HERMAN WAGNER, SOLE PROP.

Let this teach us, one and all, this morning, that everything in Nature
has its use if we but search diligently. I mean, even big rocks like
this, which are too big to build homes or even courthouses of. May we
not, at least, paint things on them in plain letters with periods and
commas, and so on, and so give added impetus to whatever is happening
to us?

But the evening wears on and the whipping mental urge of grape juice
meddled with by Uncle Henry wears off. And so, before it all ends, what
about Herman Wagner, Sole Prop. of Wagner's Sylvan Glen?

I know it has been a hard day, but let us try to get the thing in order.
Why not begin cautiously with a series of whys? Why any particular sylvan
glen in a country where everything is continuously and overwhelmingly
sylvan and you can't heave a rock without hitting a glen? Really, you
can't walk fifty yards out there without stepping on a glen--or in a
glen; it doesn't matter. What I am earnestly trying to get at is, if this
Herman Wagner wanted to be sole prop. of a sylvan glen, why should he
have gone thirty-two miles farther for one? Why didn't he have it right
there? Why insanely push thirty-two miles on in a country where miles
mean something seriou