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158
Adventures in Contentment
·
David Grayson
50
"Mr.
Grayson,
you
are
a
materialist."
"You
have
shot
me
with
a
name,"
I
replied.
"I
am
unhurt."
It
would
be
impossible
to
slay
me
on
a
day
like
this.
On
a
day
like
this
I
am
immortal.
It
comes
to
me
as
the
wonder
of
wonders,
these
spring
days,
how
surely
everything,
spiritual
as
well
as
material,
proceeds
out
of
the
earth.
I
have
times
of
sheer
Paganism
when
I
could
bow
and
touch
my
face
to
the
warm
bare
soil.
We
are
so
often
ashamed
of
the
Earth--the
soil
of
it,
the
sweat
of
it,
the
good
common
coarseness
of
it.
To
us
in
our
fine
raiment
and
soft
manners,
it
seems
indelicate.
Instead
of
seeking
that
association
with
the
earth
which
is
the
renewal
of
life,
we
devise
ourselves
distant
palaces
and
seek
strange
pleasures.
How
often
and
sadly
we
repeat
the
life
story
of
the
yellow
dodder
of
the
moist
lanes
of
my
lower
farm.
It
springs
up
fresh
and
clean
from
the
earth
itself,
and
spreads
its
clinging
viny
stems
over
the
hospitable
wild
balsam
and
golden
rod.
In
a
week's
time,
having
reached
the
warm
sunshine
of
the
upper
air,
it
forgets
its
humble
beginnings.
Its
roots
wither
swiftly
and
die
out,
but
the
sickly
yellow
stems
continue
to
flourish
and
spread,
drawing
their
nourishment
not
from
the
soil
itself,
but
by
strangling
and
sucking
the
life
juices
of
the
hosts
on
which
it
feeds.
I
have
seen
whole
byways
covered
thus
with
yellow
dodder--rootless,
leafless,
parasitic--reaching
up
to
the
sunlight,
quite
cutting
off
and
smothering
the
plants
which
gave
it
life.
A
week
or
two
it
flourishes
and
then
most
of
it
perishes
miserably.
So
many
of
us
come
to
be
like
that:
so
much
of
our
civilization
is
like
that.
Men
and
women
there
are--the
pity
of
it--who,
eating
plentifully,
have
never
themselves
taken
a
mouthful
from
the
earth.
They
have
never
known
a
moment's
real
life
of
their
own.
Lying
up
to
the
sun
in
warmth
and
comfort--but
leafless--they
do
not
think
of
the
hosts
under
them,
smothered,
strangled,
starved.
They
take
nothing
at
first
hand.
They
experience
described
emotion,
and
think
prepared
thoughts.
They
live
not
in
life,
but
in
printed
reports
of
life.
They
gather
the
odour
of
odours,
not
the
odour
itself:
they
do
not
hear,
they
overhear.
A
poor,
sad,
second-rate
existence!
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