Und nichts zu suchen
Das war mein Sinn."
The youngster who goes on a hike for nothing will get everything, and to be fit for service is to be fit for life.
FOOTNOTES.
[1] The western prairies, except in the very center of the Mississippi Valley, are beautifully rolling, and they meet every stream with deeply carved bluffs. In the early days every stream was fringed with woods; and prairie and woodland, alike, knew nothing beyond the evenly balanced contest of indigenous life. There came, however, a succession of strange epidemics, as one after another of our noxious weeds gained foothold in that fertile land. I remember well several years when dog-fennel grew in every nook and corner of my home town in Kansas; then, after a few years, a variety of thistle grew to the exclusion of every other uncultivated thing; and then followed a curious epidemic of tumble-weed, a low spreading annual which broke off at the ground in the Fall and was rolled across the open country in countless millions by the Autumn winds. I remember well my first lone "beggar louse," and how pretty I thought it was! And my first dandelion, and of that I have never changed my opinion!
[2] Road-Song of the Bander-Log.
(From Kipling's Jungle-Book.)
Here we go in a flung festoon,
Half way up to the jealous moon!