Nature. He seemed so essentially her product—so unsophisticated, so incapable of self-seeking.
For myself, I have always liked Nature's way of bestowing her benefactions, unassorted. I like the big and little basketed together under the parent tree, and not hand-picked over with an eye to commercial values as they come on the vendor's stall. It takes off something, a sense of friendliness, to see them formally laid out in graduated rows. For the same reason I liked Abel. He was so unpremeditated, so genuinely a product of the soil, so wholesome and intelligible and flavorsome. No taint of commercial standards spoiled his quality. He was incapable of considering us in the light of material for exploitation. We were real people to him, friends and fellow-beings. When our floating dock broke loose one wild night in our absence and starting off down stream on its own account, was captured by him and lassoed to a stout oak by the shore, it didn't occur to him to make capital of it, and charge up for time and rope. Instead, he glowed with the pleasure of having done a neighborly deed. And not the least of the blessings (albeit an unconscious one) that
