er if you have seen my dog? I was going for a walk, but Rex seems to
have grown tired of waiting.

THE BOY

Your dog? No, sir, I haven't seen him. Shall I go look?

THE MAN

No, never mind. He'll come back. Rex and I understand each other. He has
his little moods, like me.

THE BOY

If you were going for a walk--?

THE MAN

It doesn't matter at all. I can go any time. You don't live in this
country?

THE BOY

No, sir. I live in New York. I wish I did. It's beautiful here, isn't it?

THE MAN

It's very beautiful to me. I love it. You may have come a long road this
morning, let's sit down.

THE BOY

Thank you. I'm not interfering with anything?

THE MAN

Bless your heart! No indeed. What is there to interfere with? All we have
is life, and this is part of it.

THE BOY

I like to sit under these trees. It makes me think of the Old Testament.

THE MAN

That's interesting. How?

THE BOY

Well, maybe I'm wrong, but whenever I think of the Old Testament I see an
old man under a tree--

THE MAN

Yes?

THE BOY

A man who has lived it all through, you know, and found out something real
about it; and he sits there calm and strong, something like a tree
himself; and every once in a while somebody comes along--a boy, you
know,--and the boy talks to him all about himself, just as we imagine
we'd like to with our fathers, if they weren't so busy, or our teachers,
if they didn't depend so much upon books, or our ministers, if we thought
they would really understand,--and the old man doesn't say much maybe, but
the boy goes away much stronger and happier....

THE MAN

Yes, yes, I understand. The Old Testament.... They _did_ get hold of
things, didn't they?

THE BOY

What I can't understand is how nowadays people seem more grown up and
competent than those men were, in a way, and we do such wonderful
things--skyscrapers and aeroplanes--and yet we aren't half so wonderful as
they were in the Old Testament with their jugs and their wooden plows. I
mean, we aren't near so big as the things we do, while those old fellows
were so much bigger. We smile at them, but if some day one of our machines
fell over on us what would we do about it?

THE MAN

I wonder.

THE BOY

I went through a big factory just last week. One of my friends' father is
the manager, and all I could think of was what could a fellow do who
didn't like it, who didn't fit in.... Nowadays most everybody seems
competent about