A Taste of Honey

to complaint and protest. In this world ill-prepared action and ill-founded complaints have no value. The Life Force A creeper growing in a courtyard once had the misfortune to have its roots and branches buried under mounds of earth and rubble when the house was undergoing repairs. Later, when the courtyard was cleaned up, the owner of the house cut away the creeper, which had been badly damaged, and even pulled out its roots so that it would not grow again. The whole courtyard had then been laid with bricks and cemented over. A few weeks later, something stirred at the place where the creeper had been rooted out. The bricks heaved upwards at one point as though something were pushing them from below. This appeared very strange, but was dismissed as being the burrowings of rats or mice. The riddle was solved when some of the bricks were removed, and it was discovered that the creeper had started growing again, although in a sadly distorted form. As it happened, not all of its roots had been pulled out, and when the time of the year came around for them to grow, life began to stir within them and they pushed their way up through the cement to the sunlight. It is one of nature’s miracles that these tender leaves and buds, which can so easily be crushed to a pulp between finger and thumb, can summon up such strength as to force their way through bricks and cement. The owner of the house then regretted having attempted to take the creeper’s life. He remarked, “It is just as if it were appealing to me for the right to grow. Now I certainly won’t stand in its way.” And saying so, he removed some more of bricks so that it would grow unhindered. In less than a year’s time, a fifteen-foot creeper