e who planted it. Beyond this field lies an orchard
where, in regular and orderly rows, stand the apple trees whose bright
blossoms in the spring make the landscape so beautiful and whose fruit
in the fall serves so richly for our enjoyment. A little farther on, a
pasture is filled with sleek-coated cows, feeding quietly and
patiently until the evening when they will return to their stalls to
yield their rich milk. Still farther on lies a tract of forest. The
varied shades of the beeches, the tulip poplars and the chestnuts make
an exquisite contrast and give to the landscape its attractive
background framed in by a distant hill. Behind this hill flows a
mighty river carrying on its breast the ships by which we share the
over-abundance of our own blessings with our brothers on the other
side of the sea, from whom in turn we receive of their overplus.
Beyond this teeming river lies a level stretch of fertile land and
then the mighty ocean. On one side of the scene runs a busy highway.
Along this men pass and repass, some on foot, others drawn by their
patient and submissive horses. Still others are carried by the
new-found power of the sunshine imprisoned beneath the rocks in the
oil that has been forming ever since the sun shone down upon the great
forests of the far distant past.

In a pathway to one side, some children are playing. One of them has
laid upon the ground a rectangle of stones divided into four and her
little mind sees before her the house which is teaching her to get
ready for the work that shall come to her in later life. Meanwhile her
short-haired companion is prancing around astride a stick; he too,
little as he suspects it, is getting ready for life.

It needs little reflection to realize that the scene has not always
been what it is. The underlying ground has surely been there longest,
its age vying only with that of the bounding ocean that beats upon the
shore and works the sand into fantastic stretches. The forest has been
there long and so has the stream; the road perhaps ranks next in age;
then come the orchard trees, and most recent of all the waving grain.
People come and go but form no stable part of this landscape. We know
how the grain came to be there, and we understand the orderly
arrangement of the orchard trees; the road too we can explain. How
came the stream there, and how the forest trees? Have they always been
there, or did they too have a beginning? Was there a time when there
wa