"What were the voices? - and I will tell you."
"One came from the old heap of Ekron yonder, and the ruins of Ramleh, and Jerusalem, and Gibeon, and Bethel; - the other voice came from the flowers."
"Trust the flowers."
"Why, more than the ruins?"
"Remember," - said he. "One is God's truth; the other is man's falsehood."
"But the ruins tell truth too, Mr. Dinwiddie."
"What truth? They tell of man's faithlessness, perversity, wrongheadedness, disobedience; persisted in, till there was no remedy. And now, to be sure, they are a desolation. But that is not what God willed for the land."
"Yet surely, Mr. Dinwiddie, there come desolations into people's lives too."
"By the same reason."
"Surely without it sometimes."