peaceful. But I don't permit myself this luxury
very often, only once a month. [Pointing to the picture] Look there!
That is a map of our country as it was fifty years ago. The green tints,
both dark and light, represent forests. Half the map, as you see, is
covered with it. Where the green is striped with red the forests were
inhabited by elk and wild goats. Here on this lake, lived great flocks
of swans and geese and ducks; as the old men say, there was a power of
birds of every kind. Now they have vanished like a cloud. Beside the
hamlets and villages, you see, I have dotted down here and there the
various settlements, farms, hermit's caves, and water-mills. This
country carried a great many cattle and horses, as you can see by the
quantity of blue paint. For instance, see how thickly it lies in this
part; there were great herds of them here, an average of three horses to
every house. [A pause] Now, look lower down. This is the country as it
was twenty-five years ago. Only a third of the map is green now with
forests. There are no goats left and no elk. The blue paint is lighter,
and so on, and so on. Now we come to the third part; our country as it
appears to-day. We still see spots of green, but not much. The elk, the
swans, the black-cock have disappeared. It is, on the whole, the picture
of a regular and slow decline which it will evidently only take about
ten or fifteen more years to complete. You may perhaps object that it
is the march of progress, that the old order must give place to the new,
and you might be right if roads had been run through these ruined woods,
or if factories and schools had taken their place. The people then would
have become better educated and healthier and richer, but as it is, we
have nothing of the sort. We have the same swamps and mosquitoes;
the same disease and want; the typhoid, the diphtheria, the burning
villages. We are confronted by the degradation of our country, brought
on by the fierce struggle for existence of the human race. It is the
consequence of the ignorance and unconsciousness of starving, shivering,
sick humanity that, to save its children, instinctively snatches
at everything that can warm it and still its hunger. So it destroys
everything it can lay its hands on, without a thought for the morrow.
And almost everything has gone, and nothing has been created to take its
place. [Coldly] But I see by your face that I am not interesting you.

HELENA. I know so littl