What is there to interfere with? All we have
is life, and this is part of it.
THE BOY
I like to sit under these trees. It makes me think of the Old Testament.
THE MAN
That's interesting. How?
THE BOY
Well, maybe I'm wrong, but whenever I think of the Old Testament I see an
old man under a tree--
THE MAN
Yes?
THE BOY
A man who has lived it all through, you know, and found out something real
about it; and he sits there calm and strong, something like a tree
himself; and every once in a while somebody comes along--a boy, you
know,--and the boy talks to him all about himself, just as we imagine
we'd like to with our fathers, if they weren't so busy, or our teachers,
if they didn't depend so much upon books, or our ministers, if we thought
they would really understand,--and the old man doesn't say much maybe, but
the boy goes away much stronger and happier....
THE MAN
Yes, yes, I understand. The Old Testament.... They _did_ get hold of
things, didn't they?
THE BOY
What I can't understand is how nowadays people seem more grown up and
competent than those men were, in a way, and we do such wonderful
things--skyscrapers and aeroplanes--and yet we aren't half so wonderful as
they were in the Old Testament with their jugs and their wooden plows.
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