There will be thousands and
thousands of people scattered over it; and the forest will be cut down--can
you ever believe that?--cut through and through, leaving some trees here and
some trees there. And the cane will be cut down: can you believe that? And
instead of buffalo and wild-cats and bears and wolves and panthers there
will be flocks of the whitest sheep, with little lambs frisking about on the
green spring meadows. And under the big shady trees in the pastures there
will be herds of red cattle, so gentle and with backs so soft and broad that
you could almost stretch yourselves out and go to sleep on them, and they
would never stop chewing their cuds. Only think of the hundreds of orchards
with their apple-blossoms and of the big ripe, golden apples on the trees in
the fall! It will be one of the quietest, gentlest lands that a people ever
owned; and this is the gift of your fathers who fought for it and of your
mothers who fought for it also. And you must never forget that you would
never have had such fathers, had you not had such mothers to stand by them
and to die with them.
"This is what I have wished to teach you more than anything in your
books--that you may become men and women worthy of them and of what they
have left you.
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