Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/462

 of folks. We don't begin to take enough account of that. Plants now, they're various too—sure they are. An Alpine harebell is as different from an oleander as I am from a natural-born artist. But everybody that has any sense knows that an oleander would freeze and starve to death if you planted it up near a glacier. You can tell that much, just by looking at it. But you can't tell a thing, not a doggoned thing about a human being just by looking at him, can you?"

Marise agreed with intense conviction that you can tell less than nothing by looking at a human being.

"And then the human race has got itself so mixed up. There isn't the slightest chance, not one in a million, that a hare-bell will spring up in a Roman garden, and be burned to a crisp by sunlight that just makes an oleander feel good and comfortable. But that's what happens the whole enduring time with folks."

"Why, I wonder," cried Marise, with a startled look, "if that is what happened to me."

"I know it's what happened to me," said Neale. "I believe it happens to lots more folks than have any idea of it. They blame it on the climate, so to speak. But the climate's all right for some one else. It's not their climate, that's all. Let's start out on a hunt for our climate, will you?"

"I'm afraid it's very hard to make a guess at it," said Marise soberly but making no comment on the "our."

"It surely is. It's terribly hard. The point is that nobody but the person himself can make any sort of a guess at it. And it's awfully hard for him. Wouldn't you think, when it is so hard under the best of circumstances, that folks would try to teach every youngster to make the best sort of guess possible as to where he really belongs? But they never give you any hint of that, in any of the 'education' you get in school or out of it. They seem to be in mortal terror for fear you will find it out yourself. They jam your beak down on the chalk-line and hope to goodness you'll never look up long enough to see that only your own foolishness keeps you there. Or they keep you there till you've tied yourself up with responsibilities, so you can't get out. Whatever is the