I behold the broad expanse of life over the earth—

I see the stalwart aborigines straying naked through the primal woods, light-footed amid the grass; I hear their powerful cries and calls to each other, resounding from cliffs and gullies;

I see the civilised man in his study among his books, or driving with his lady along the boulevards; I see the well-dressed crowds of Paris and New York; I see the famished and raging mobs of incendiaries;

The long vain fight of man against Nature I see, not traveling hand in hand with but setting himself in opposition to her: the necessary prologue and apprenticeship—as of a wayward boy against his mother—yet vanquished, finally and surely vanquished;

All well; and I see there is no need to hurry.

* * * * *

I behold well-pleased the broad expanse of life over the earth; I see the great factories, with smoke in the early morning—the hands coming in to work; the lines of shops along the principal streets of cities—the piers and wharves with those who toil on them;

I see the great broad pleasure of life among the millions, the energy, the scheming, planning, and the solid execution of plans;

The ties of marriage, friendship, heroic actions, dreams, adventures;

I see also the sufferings, the hardships, the hatred, the sin and misery, the clenched teeth, the evil of everything that is established and exists, and the need that it should be overthrown;

I take part in these too—they are well. I see the incessant change in society, the gaunt desperate problems which attend it in every stage,

And the great problem which for each man stands behind these problems—the open secret which unlooses them, dissolves them at a touch, as a drop of water dissolves a flake of snow.