A long time ago, when I was young and living in another place, I had a very old neighbor from Russia. He interested me, because at 86, he had begun building a new house, when his old one burned down. And at 88, I watched him planting fruit trees. To labor for many days in the hot sun, at 88, to plant trees whose fruit he would never see, made him a curiosity to me.

At that time, I had not yet heard about the English builder who had built a great hall in 1386, and who had also planted the oak trees from which would come the lumber to replace the old timber 500 years later. Had he not planted the oaks, there would not have been replacement timber of the proper size five centuries later.

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