present attenuation.

The well-sweep had served its turn, and my companion and I relapsed into
silence. After a while we passed another farmyard, with nothing which
seemed deserving of remark except the wreck of an old wagon.

"Look," I said, "if you want to see one of the greatest of all the
triumphs of human ingenuity, one of the most beautiful, as it is one
of the most useful, of all the mechanisms which the intelligence of
successive ages has called into being."

"I see nothing," my companion answered, "but an old broken-down wagon.
Why they leave such a piece of lumbering trash about their place, where
people can see it as they pass, is more than I can account for."

"And yet," said I, "there is one of the most extraordinary products of
human genius and skill,--an object which combines the useful and the
beautiful to an extent which hardly any simple form of mechanism can
pretend to rival. Do you notice how, while everything else has gone to
smash, that wheel remains sound and fit for service? Look at it merely
for its beauty.

"See the perfect circles, the outer and the inner. A circle is in itself
a consummate wonder of geometrical symmetry. It is the line in which
the omnipotent energy delights to move. There is no fault in it to
be amended. The first drawn circle and the last both embody the same
complete fulfillment of a perfect design. Then look at the rays which
pass from the inner to the outer circle. How beautifully they bring the
greater and lesser circles into connection with each other! The flowers
know that secret,--the marguerite in the meadow displays it as clearly
as the great sun in heaven. How beautiful is this flower of wood and
iron, which we were ready to pass by without wasting a look upon it! But
its beauty is only the beginning of its wonderful claim upon us for
our admiration. Look at that field of flowering grass, the triticum
vulgare,--see how its waves follow the breeze in satiny alternations
of light and shadow. You admire it for its lovely aspect; but when you
remember that this flowering grass is wheat, the finest food of the
highest human races, it gains a dignity, a glory, that its beauty alone
could not give it.

"Now look at that exquisite structure lying neglected and disgraced,
but essentially unchanged in its perfection, before you. That slight
and delicate-looking fabric has stood such a trial as hardly any
slender contrivance, excepting always the valves of the heart,