Yet, while I would not under-estimate the utilitarian worth of crops and timber, the age-old truth is still insistent: Man cannot live by bread alone. You may clear from the surface of the land every plant that is not edible; you may fell every tree that does not serve for telegraph pole or pit wood; you may tabulate the food-productive qualities of the whole earth, and serve it out in a blue-book as literature for the people; you may manufacture electricity till there is no longer any night, and the mysteries of the twilight and the moonlight and the starlight are lost to us for ever; you may destroy the birds till there isn’t one Glad-song left in the caterpillar-riddled orchards and gardens; you may harness the rivers and streams for mechanical purposes, and drown the voices of the weir in the whirr of wheels, till there isn’t an ounce of energy flowing to waste throughout the length and breadth of the country; you may turn all Nature into a huge commercial enterprise that is the last word in economics and efficient organization—and what will be the result? Machines in place of souls! Germany strove to subserve everything to her own materialistic ends, and the price of her hideous and colossal crime is a world’s agony. Though this may seem but a parable, to some the reading will be clear: Where there is no vision, the people perish. * * * * * Transcriber’s Notes: Obvious punctuation errors repaired. Page 112, “contribubution” changed to “contribution” (own literary contribution) Page 167, “away” changed to “way” (my way round) Page 178, “seach” changed to “search” (in search of you) Page 200, “aromati” changed to “aromatic” (its aromatic leaves) Page 244, “bric” changed to “brac” of “bric-à-brac” End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Between the Larch-woods and the Weir, by Flora Klickmann