“The tears rolled from beneath the shrivelled eyelids. If Truth had appeared above him in the clouds now, he could not have seen her; the mist of death was in his eyes. “‘My soul hears their glad step coming,’ he said; ‘and they shall mount! they shall mount!’ He raised his shrivelled hand to his eyes. “Then slowly from the white sky above, through the still air, came something falling, falling, falling. Softly it fluttered down, and dropped on to the breast of the dying man. He felt it with his hands. It was a feather. He died holding it.” Olive Schreiner, _The Story of an African Farm_. A PARABLE FOR PHILANTHROPISTS Christopher and I were motoring through the Adirondacks; and, on the morning in question, were traversing an unusually long stretch of unbroken wilderness. For ten or fifteen miles we had passed not a cottage, not a camp, not even a trail. Nothing but forest on both sides of the road--wild, tangled forest, beautiful, fragrant, and infinitely lonely. Its silence had fallen upon us. We felt as if we had escaped forever from the troubled haunts of men, and could never again be confronted with human problems. We drove slowly, with only a half apprehensive eye on the gray sky, which threatened rain. I was just thinking that it was strange we saw so little evidence of the wild animal life with which the woods must abound, when suddenly, like an answer to my mental challenge, there came a little stir in the bushes ahead of us. A tiny, discreet stir. No suggestion of a bear or a deer. Perhaps a hedgehog, however. As we passed, I looked closely and, to my astonishment, saw, not a hedgehog, not even a rabbit or a squirrel, but--of all things, in that uninhabited wilderness--a shrinking, small gray kitten. I could hardly have been more surprised by the appearance of a woodchuck on Fifth Avenue. Christopher saw it as soon as I did, and he slid into neutral and stopped the car. An indignant and disdainful look crept about his mouth. I knew what he was thinking. We live in a summer-resorted valley ourselves,--and we have had incredulously disgusting experience with people who abandon pet cats when they close their cottages. But not out in the wilderness like this, at the mercy of all kinds of dangers, and so little and helpless, its mother’s milk scarcely dry on its mouth. I was so angry that I could not speak, as I got out of the car and went back along the road. “I don’t know what in the world we’ll do with it,” said Christopher. The point was well taken. We were planning to spend the night in a hotel. Neither of us hesitated, however. Our duty seemed clear. “I suppose we can leave it at some camp or farmhouse,” I suggested. “And pay them for taking care of it!” Christopher added, ironically.