e conditions once removed, like
a bent tree, it had sprung back to its normal uprightness.

"To put the whole matter in the nutshell of a parable, let me compare
humanity in the olden time to a rosebush planted in a swamp, watered
with black bog-water, breathing miasmatic fogs by day, and chilled with
poison dews at night. Innumerable generations of gardeners had done
their best to make it bloom, but beyond an occasional half-opened bud
with a worm at the heart, their efforts had been unsuccessful. Many,
indeed, claimed that the bush was no rosebush at all, but a noxious
shrub, fit only to be uprooted and burned. The gardeners, for the most
part, however, held that the bush belonged to the rose family, but had
some ineradicable taint about it, which prevented the buds from coming
out, and accounted for its generally sickly condition. There were a
few, indeed, who maintained that the stock was good enough, that the
trouble was in the bog, and that under more favorable conditions the
plant might be expected to do better. But these persons were not
regular gardeners, and being condemned by the latter as mere theorists
and day dreamers, were, for the most part, so regarded by the people.
Moreover, urged some eminent moral philosophers, even conceding for the
sake of the argument that the bush might possibly do better elsewhere,
it was a more valuable discipline for the buds to try to bloom in a bog
than it would be under more favorable conditions. The buds that
succeeded in opening might indeed be very rare, and the flowers pale
and scentless, but they represented far more moral effort than if they
had bloomed spontaneously in a garden.

"The regular gardeners and the moral philosophers had their way. The
bush remained rooted in the bog, and the old course of treatment went
on. Continually new varieties of forcing mixtures were applied to the
roots, and more recipes than could be numbered, each declared by its
advocates the best and only suitable preparation, were used to kill the
vermin and remove the mildew. This went on a very long time.
Occasionally some one claimed to observe a slight improvement in the
appearance of the bush, but there were quite as many who declared that
it did not look so well as it used to. On the whole there could not be
said to be any marked change. Finally, during a period of general
despondency as to the prospects of the bush where it was, the idea of
transplanting it was again mooted, and thi