"It can't be
quite true though. I suspect man has more to do with the unmaking than
the making of either. We have reason to be glad he has not come near
enough to us yet to destroy either our river or our atmosphere."
"He is creeping on, though. The quarries are not very far from you even
now."
"The quarries do little or no harm. There are a great many things man
may do that only make nature show her beauty the more. I have been
thinking a good deal about it lately: it is the rubbish that makes all
the difficulty--the refuse of the mills and the pits and the iron-works
and the potteries that does all the mischief."
"So it is! and worst of all the human rubbish--especially that which
gathers in our great cities, and gives so much labor in vain to
clergyman and philanthropist!"
Hester smiled--not that she was pleased with the way Vavasor spoke, for
she could not but believe he would in his _rubbish_ include many of
her dear people, but that she was amused at his sympathetic tone towards
the clergy as generally concerned in the matter. For she had had a
little experience, and had listened to much testimony from such as knew,
and firmly believed that the clergy were very near the root of the evil;
and that not with the hoe and weeder, but with the watering pot and
artificial manure, helping largely to convert the poor--into beggars,
and the lawless into hypocrites, heaping cairn upon cairn on the grave
of their poor prostrate buried souls.
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