a fine instrument ready to his hand; and
in due proportion to the completeness of his
indifference to it is the strength and beauty
of his personal self. This is readily seen; a
garden flower becomes a mere degenerate copy
of itself if it is simply neglected; a plant must
be cultivated to the highest pitch, and benefit
by the whole of the gardener's skill, or else it
must be a pure savage, wild, and fed only by
the earth and sky. Who cares for any intermediate
states? What value or strength is
there in the neglected garden rose which has
the canker in every bud? For diseased or
dwarfed blossoms are sure to result from an
arbitrary change of condition, resulting from
the neglect of the man who has hitherto been
the providence of the plant in its unnatural
life. But there are wind-blown plains where
the daisies grow tall, with moon faces such
as no cultivation can produce in them. Cultivate,
then, to the very utmost; forget no inch
of your garden ground, no smallest plant that
grows in it; make no foolish pretence nor fond
mistake in the fancy that you are ready to
forget it, and so subject it to the frightful consequences
of half-measures. The plant that is
watered to-day and forgotten to-morrow must
dwindle or decay. The plant that looks for no
help but from Nature itself measures its
strength at once, and either dies and is
re-created or grows into a great tree whose
boughs fill the sky. But make no mistake like
the religionists and some philosophers; leave
no part of yourself neglected while you know
it to be yourself. While the ground is the
gardener's it is his business to tend it; but
some day a call may come to him from another
country or from death itself, and in a moment
he is no longer the gardener, his business is at
an end, he has no more duty of that kind
at all. Then his favorite plants suffer and die,
and the delicate ones become one with the
earth. But soon fierce Nature claims the place
for her own, and covers it with thick grass or
giant weeds, or nurses some sapling in it
till its branches shade the ground. Be warned,
and tend your garden to the utmost, till you can
pass away utterly and let it return to Nature
and become the wind-blown plain where the
wild-flowers grow. Then, if you pass that way
and look at it, whatever has happened will
neither grieve nor elate you. For you will be
able to say, "I am the rocky ground, I am the
great tree, I am the strong daisies," indifferent
which