“Persimmons, sir.”
“Good heavens! Haven’t you got any more sense than to eat persimmons at this time of the year? They’ll pucker the very stomach out of you!”
“I know, sir. That’s why I’m eatin’ them. I’m tryin’ to shrink me stomach to fit me rations.”
(29)
Numerous are the animals that, escaping persecution, have adapted themselves to the altered conditions. Was this adaptation unconscious on their part? There was room and to spare when it was in progress, and did not choice enter into the problem? Or was it mere chance that they stayed near or even in habitations, and with no more volition than the autumn leaves that now filled the air?
It may be mere coincidence, but the skunk that lived under the doorstep yet gave no sign of its presence; the raccoon that occupied a clothes-line box and was not suspected; the opossum that lived in a hollow tree within ten feet of the house and was discovered only by accident—all suggest to me that they considered the several situations, and realizing their advantages in the matter of food supply, were willing to take the chances; yet a fine bit of primitive woodland was not fifty yards away.—C. C. Abbott, New York Sun.
(30)
Why should we not adapt our moral seed-sowing for character to the different types of men as carefully as agriculturists do after close study of the different types of soil?