"Seems to me you've given me a pretty big contract all in one question. If you could narrow down a bit—be more specific—"
"Well, then, do you believe in that?" She raised her arm sharply and pointed down the precipitous slopes to the green American rushing pell-mell down its rugged cañon.
They had just come in sight of the gold dredger, whose great shovels were tearing down the banks, leaving a long serpentine line of débris behind the craft in the middle of the river.
"That dredge?" he asked. "What's it to do with religion?"
"To me it personifies the greed of all mankind," she replied. "It makes me wild to think that a great, lumbering, manmade toy should come up that river and destroy its natural beauty for the sake of the tiny particles of gold in the earth and rocks. Ugh! I detest the sight of the thing. The gold they get will buy diamond necklaces for fat, foolish old women, and not a stone among them can compare with the dewdrop flashing there in that filaree blossom! It will buy silk gowns, and any spider can weave a fabric with which they can't begin to compete. It will build tall skyscrapers, and which of them will be as imposing as one of these majestic oaks which that machine may uproot? Bah, I hate the sight of the thing!"
"Gold also buys food and simple clothing," he reminded her.
"I suppose so," she sighed. "We've gotten to a point where gold is necessary. But, oh, how unnecessary it is, after all, if we were only as God intended us to be! I detest anything utilitarian. I hate orchards because they supplant the trees and chaparral that Nature has planted. I hate the irrigating systems, because the dams and reservoirs that they demand ruin rugged cañons and valleys. I hate railroads, because their hideous old trains go screeching through God's peaceful solitudes. I hate automobiles, because they bring irreverent unbelievers into God's chapels."
"But they also take cramped-up city folks out into the country," he said. "And all of them are not irreverent."
"Oh, yes—I know. I'm selfish there. And I'm not at all practical. But I do hate 'em!"
"And what do you like in life?" he asked amusedly.