And now I am a pebble here in Reading street, to be
ground beneath the wheels of busy men: and yet you cannot kill me,
or hinder my fulfilling the law which cannot be broken. This year I
am a pebble in the street; and next year I shall be dust upon the
fields above; and the year after that I shall be alive again, and
rise from the ground as fair green wheat-stems, bearing up food for
the use of man. And even after that you cannot kill me. The
trampled and sodden straw will rot only to enter into a new life;
and I shall pass through a fresh cycle of strange adventures, age
after age, till time shall be no more; doing my work in my
generation, and fulfilling to the last the will of God, as
faithfully as when I was the water-breathing sponge in the abysses
of the old chalk sea." All this and more, gentlemen and ladies, the
pebble could tell to you, and will: but he is old and venerable,
and like old men, he wishes to be approached with respect, and does
not like to be questioned too much or too rapidly; so that you must
not be offended if you meet with more than one rebuff from him; or
if he keeps stubborn silence, till he has seen that you are a modest
and attentive person, to whom it is worth while to open a little of
his forty or fifty thousand years' experience.
Second only to the good effect of this study on the logical faculty,
seems to me to be its effect on the imagination.
Pages:
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154