"That things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain."

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These are the hands whose sturdy labor brings The peasant's food, the golden pomp of kings; This is the page whose letters shall be seen, Changed by the sun to words of living green; This is the scholar whose immortal penSpells the first lesson hunger taught to men; These are the lines that heaven-commanded Toil Shows on his deed, - the charter of the soil!

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.