2.
"HALF-EATEN and good for nothing," said I of the strawberry. I need not have expressed myself with such sweeping contempt.
Some snail may have been glad to finish up that wreck. Some children might not have disdained the final bite.
Yet to confine my reflections to snails and their peers: why should not they have a share in strawberries?
Man is very apt to contemplate himself out of all proportion to his surroundings: true, he is "much better than they," yet have they also their assigned province and their guaranteed dues.
Fruits for man, green herb for other living creatures, including creepers on the earth, is the decree in Genesis. Thus for the Garden of Eden: and why not thus, as regards the spirit of the decree, here and now?
But man, alas! finds it convenient here to snap off a right and there to chip away a due. Greed grudges their morsel to hedgerow birds, and idleness robs the provident hare of his winter haystack, and science pares away at the living creature bodily, "And what will ye do in the end thereof?"
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