that in this lonely place the Spirit of Creation spoke to us on this
matter. "You are wise men," that Spirit might say--and I, being a
suspicious, touchy, over-earnest man for all my predisposition to
plumpness, would instantly scent the irony (while my companion, I
fancy, might even plume himself), "and to beget your wisdom is
chiefly why the world was made. You are so good as to propose an
acceleration of that tedious multitudinous evolution upon which I am
engaged. I gather, a universal tongue would serve you there. While I
sit here among these mountains--I have been filing away at them for
this last aeon or so, just to attract your hotels, you know--will
you be so kind----? A few hints----?"

Then the Spirit of Creation might transiently smile, a smile that
would be like the passing of a cloud. All the mountain wilderness
about us would be radiantly lit. (You know those swift moments, when
warmth and brightness drift by, in lonely and desolate places.)

Yet, after all, why should two men be smiled into apathy by the
Infinite? Here we are, with our knobby little heads, our eyes and
hands and feet and stout hearts, and if not us or ours, still the
endless multitudes about us and in our loins are to come at last to
the World State and a greater fellowship and the universal tongue.
Let us to the extent of our ability, if not answer that question, at
any rate try to think ourselves within sight of the best thing
possible. That, after all, is our purpose, to imagine our best and
strive for it, and it is a worse folly and a worse sin than
presumption, to abandon striving because the best of all our bests
looks mean amidst the suns.

Now you as a botanist would, I suppose, incline to something as