"Don't be ashamed to say you love children, boy, though the rest of the world laugh,--for they're laughing at a lie. They'll tell you the parental instinct is dying out with the advance of civilization; that the time will come when man will educate himself to his own extinction. It's false, I tell you, absolutely false." Ichabod had forgotten himself, and he rushed on, far above the head of the gaping Swede. "There's one instinct in the world, the instinct of parenthood, which advances eternal, stronger, infinitely, as man's mind grows stronger. So unvarying the rule that it's almost an index of civilization itself, advancing from a crude instinct of the body-base and animal--until it reaches the realm of the mind: the highest, the holiest of man's desires: yet stronger immeasurably, as with the educated, things of the mind are stronger than things of the body. Those who deny this are fools, or imposters,--I know not which. To do so is to strike at the very foundation of human nature,--but impotently,--for in fundamentals, human nature is good." Unconsciously, a smile flashed over the long face. "Talk about depopulating the earth! All the wars of primitive man were inadequate. The vices of civilization have likewise failed. Even man's mightiest weapon, legislation, couldn't stay the tide for a moment, if it would. While man is man, and woman is woman, that long, above government, religion,--life and death itself,--will reign supreme the eternal instinct of parenthood." Ichabod caught himself in his own period and stopped, a little ashamed of his earnestness. He sat up in the seat preparatory to returning to his own wagon, then dropped his hand once more on the boy's shoulder. "I'm old enough to be your father, boy, and have done, in all things, the reverse of what I advised you. Therefore, I know I was wrong. We may sneer and speak of poetry when the words proceed from another, my boy; but, as inevitable as death, there comes to every man the knowledge that he stands accursed of Nature, who hasn't heard the voice of his own child call 'father!'" He clambered down, leaving the speechless Ole sprawling on the wagon-seat. Back in his own wagon, he smiled broadly to himself. "Strange, how easily the apple falls when it's ripe," he soliloquized. They drove on clear to the mill without another word; without even a grin from the broad-faced Ole, who sat in ponderous thought in the wagon ahead. To a nature such as his the infrequency of a new idea gives it the force of a cataclysm; during its presence, obliterating everything else.