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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: farmer came into the wilderness he was not a farmer, he was first
of all a wood-chopper. He regarded the forest as a stubborn enemy
in possession of his land. He attacked it with fire and axe and
exterminated it, instead of keeping a few captives to hold their
green umbrellas over his head when at last his grain fields should
be smiling around him and he should sit down on his doorstep to
smoke a pipe of home-grown tobacco.
In the time of adversity one should prepare for prosperity. I
fancy there are a good many people unconsciously repeating the
mistake of the Canadian farmer--chopping down all the native
growths of life, clearing the ground of all the useless pretty
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