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158
Adventures in Contentment
·
David Grayson
132
Not
long
ago,
coming
in
from
my
fields,
I
fell
to
thinking
of
the
supreme
wonder
of
a
tree;
and
as
I
walked
I
met
the
Professor.
"How,"
I
asked,
"does
the
sap
get
up
to
the
top
of
these
great
maples
and
elms?
What
power
is
there
that
should
draw
it
upward
against
the
force
of
gravity?"
He
looked
at
me
a
moment
with
his
peculiar
slow
smile.
"I
don't
know,"
he
said.
"What!"
I
exclaimed,
"do
you
mean
to
tell
me
that
science
has
not
solved
this
simplest
of
natural
phenomena?"
"We
do
not
know,"
he
said.
"We
explain,
but
we
do
not
know."
No,
my
Explanatory
Friend,
we
do
not
know--we
do
not
know
the
why
of
the
flowers,
or
the
trees,
or
the
suns;
we
do
not
even
know
why,
in
our
own
hearts,
we
should
be
asking
this
curious
question--and
other
deeper
questions.
No
man
becomes
a
great
writer
unless
he
possesses
a
highly
developed
sense
of
Mystery,
of
wonder.
A
great
writer
is
never
blasé;
everything
to
him
happened
not
longer
ago
than
this
forenoon.
The
other
night
the
Professor
and
the
Scotch
Preacher
happened
in
here
together
and
we
fell
to
discussing,
I
hardly
know
how,
for
we
usually
talk
the
neighbourhood
chat
of
the
Starkweathers,
of
Horace
and
of
Charles
Baxter,
we
fell
to
discussing
old
Izaak
Walton--and
the
nonsense
(as
a
scientific
age
knows
it
to
be)
which
he
sometimes
talked
with
such
delightful
sobriety.
"How
superior
it
makes
one
feel,
in
behalf
of
the
enlightenment
and
progress
of
his
age,"
said
the
Professor,
"when
he
reads
Izaak's
extraordinary
natural
history."
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