The man of the city closes his house, forgets his office and
goes away. He has a suit of store clothes on him and two linen
collars in his handbag, but for the rest he carries the garb
of the vagabond, and getting into this as quick as he can he
buries his face in the pine-needles and lets the wind and rain
beat down on his uncovered head and untrimmed beard. And the
weeks pass; and then happens the stranger thing. Through the
music of the forest and the harmonies of the falling waters, he
hears, at first, far away and hardly audible, then ever nearer
and clearer, the voice of the city he deserted, and to his
manhood’s spirit that voice speaks with a charm which overcomes
the woodland’s spell and in another day he is back again, back
in the old street, to the old work, to the ever dear old city.
And once more keeping step with the vast army of toilers, he
knows that not in solitude, but in society, is character made,
and more, that not nature, but human nature, is God’s best
handiwork.--T. C. MCCLELLAND.
(2994)
=Soil=--See FRUIT AND SOIL.