CARVED MESSAGES •
There lurks in all of us a thought for the briefness of earthly life and a desire to leave something of ourselves for posterit?. A.B. carves on the tree the legend that he loves CD, and decorates it with heart and arrow. Time and the growth of the tree—it is easier done on green bark—take care of the message. Rarely do the bulk of such messages last longer than love of such swains as A.B., which is fitting. All manner of people are carvers, however. Some of us carved our school desks or the stalls of the stable. I was fishing the other day and left the lake to take shelter In a derelict house built long ago to give a roof to Irish labourers who worked on the water scheme. Cut in the stone of the wall I read, 'D.M. and O'B. Fed up and far from home, 1903? 1 looked at the hills, unchanged, and thought that if D.M. and O'B. are alive now, they are no longer young, but I could see them in their prime, weary of their isolation in the hills and anxious for their return to more congenial places. A sad message, I thought, with a more poignant significance than the testimony to the love of Jack for Jill, so short and like the flight of a butterfly.
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