““In the narrow thread of sod between the shaved banks and the toppling fences grow the relics of what once was Illinois — the prairie. No one in the bus sees these relics. A worried farmer, his fertilizer bill projecting from his shirt pocket, looks blankly at the lupines, lespedezas or Baptisias that originally pumped nitrogen out of the prairie air and into his black loamy acres. He does not distinguish them from the parvenu quack-grass in which they grow. Were I to ask him the name of that white spike of pea-like flowers hugging the fence, he would shake his head. A weed, likely.””
