know
by experience I shall have to do alone. Every man must eradicate his own
devil-grass. The neighbors who have leisure to help you in grape-picking
time are all busy when devil-grass is most aggressive. My neighbors'
visits are well timed: it is only their hens which have seasons for
their own.

I am told that abundant and rank weeds are signs of a rich soil; but
I have noticed that a thin, poor soil grows little but weeds. I am
inclined to think that the substratum is the same, and that the only
choice in this world is what kind of weeds you will have. I am not much
attracted by the gaunt, flavorless mullein, and the wiry thistle of
upland country pastures, where the grass is always gray, as if the world
were already weary and sick of life. The awkward, uncouth wickedness of
remote country-places, where culture has died out after the first crop,
is about as disagreeable as the ranker and richer vice of city life,
forced by artificial heat and the juices of an overfed civilization.
There is no doubt that, on the whole, the rich soil is the best: the
fruit of it has body and flavor. To what affluence does a woman (to
take an instance, thank Heaven, which is common) grow, with favoring
circumstances, under the stimulus of the richest social and intellectual
influences! I am aware that there has been a good deal said in poetry
about the fringed gentian and the harebell of rocky districts and
waysides, and I know that it is possible for maidens to bloom in very
slight soil into a wild-wood grace and beauty; yet, the world through,
they lack that wealth of charms, that tropic affluence of both person
and mind, which higher and more stimulating culture brings,--the passion
as well as the soul glowing in the Cloth-of-Gold rose. Neither persons
nor plants are ever fully themselves until they are cultivated to
their highest. I, for one, have no fear that society will be too much
enriched. The only question is about keeping down the weeds; and I
have learned by experience, that we need new sorts of hoes, and more
disposition to use them.

Moral Deduction.--The difference between soil and society is evident. We
bury decay in the earth; we plant in it the perishing; we feed it with
offensive refuse: but nothing grows out of it that is not clean; it
gives us back life and beauty for our rubbish. Society returns us what
we give it.

Pretending to reflect upon these things, but in reality watching the
blue-jays, who are pecking