andour to quote, puts the matter as
neatly as may be. "I am very sorry indeed that you have been so clever
as to make up so good (or bad) a story: but I willingly recognise that
no one has brought the matter into so clear a light as you have done.
You are always perspicuous, and nothing but good can come of such
conscientious work as yours. Still, you must remember that you proved
Darwin to be an arch-impostor; and there was no fault in your logic.
It is not the logic that fails in this book." No. It was not the
logic.

THE COMMEMORATION

Eleven o'clock in the morning found the village at its field and
household affairs, with birds abroad and dogs at home assisting
in various ways. The plovers wove black and white webs over the
water-meadows, gulls were like drifting snow behind the plow. In a
cottage garden the dog, high on his haunches at the length of his
chain, cocked his ears towards the huswife in the wash-house, hoping
against hope for a miracle. Luxuriously full, the cat slept on the
window-ledge. Meantime a roadman was cleaning a gutter, a thatcher
pegged down his yelm; a milkmaid, driving up the street in a float,
stopped, threw the reins over the pony's quarters, and jumped down,
very trim in her overall and breeches. The church clock struck eleven.

She turned, as if shot, and stood facing the church whose flag
streamed to the south. The roadman straightened himself and leaned
upon his mattock; the huswife shut the back door, and the dog crept
into his barrel. The schoolyard, accustomed at that hour to flood
suddenly with noise, remained empty. But the milkmaid's horse drew
to the hedge for a bite, the birds on the hillside settled about the
halted plow, and the cat slept on.

We are what we are, all of us. Beasts and birds are not sentimental.
Things to them stand for things, not for thoughts about things. I have
seen young rabbits play cross-touch about the stiffened form of
an unfortunate brother. I have seen a barnyard cock flap and crow,
standing upon the dead body of one of his wives. Directly a creature
is dead it ceases to be a creature at all to those which once hailed
it fellow. It becomes part of the landscape in which it lies; and
with certain beasts which we are accustomed to call obscene it becomes
something to eat. But dogs which have lived long with us are not like
that. I knew two dogs which lived in a house together and shared the
same loose-box at night. One night one of them