The Complete Writings, vol 1 | Page 5

only another proof of the wide sweep of moral forces. I suppose that it
is as necessary in the vegetable world as it is elsewhere to avoid the
appearance of evil.
In offering you the fruit of my garden, which has been gathered from
week to week, without much reference to the progress of the crops or
the drought, I desire to acknowledge an influence which has lent half
the charm to my labor. If I were in a court of justice, or injustice, under
oath, I should not like to say, that, either in the wooing days of spring,
or under the suns of the summer solstice, you had been, either with hoe,
rake, or miniature spade, of the least use in the garden; but your
suggestions have been invaluable, and, whenever used, have been paid
for. Your horticultural inquiries have been of a nature to astonish the
vegetable world, if it listened, and were a constant inspiration to

research. There was almost nothing that you did not wish to know; and
this, added to what I wished to know, made a boundless field for
discovery. What might have become of the garden, if your advice had
been followed, a good Providence only knows; but I never worked
there without a consciousness that you might at any moment come
down the walk, under the grape-arbor, bestowing glances of approval,
that were none the worse for not being critical; exercising a sort of
superintendence that elevated gardening into a fine art; expressing a
wonder that was as complimentary to me as it was to Nature; bringing
an atmosphere which made the garden a region of romance, the soil of
which was set apart for fruits native to climes unseen. It was this bright
presence that filled the garden, as it did the summer, with light, and
now leaves upon it that tender play of color and bloom which is called
among the Alps the after-glow.
NOOK FARM, HARTFORD, October, 1870
C. D. W.

PRELIMINARY
The love of dirt is among the earliest of passions, as it is the latest.
Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are
dirty, we are pure. Fondness for the ground comes back to a man after
he has run the round of pleasure and business, eaten dirt, and sown
wild-oats, drifted about the world, and taken the wind of all its moods.
The love of digging in the ground (or of looking on while he pays
another to dig) is as sure to come back to him as he is sure, at last, to go
under the ground, and stay there. To own a bit of ground, to scratch it
with a hoe, to plant seeds and watch, their renewal of life, this is the
commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do.
When Cicero writes of the pleasures of old age, that of agriculture is
chief among them:
"Venio nunc ad voluptates agricolarum, quibus ego incredibiliter
delector: quae nec ulla impediuntur senectute, et mihi ad sapientis

vitam proxime videntur accedere." (I am driven to Latin because New
York editors have exhausted the English language in the praising of
spring, and especially of the month of May.)
Let us celebrate the soil. Most men toil that they may own a piece of it;
they measure their success in life by their ability to buy it. It is alike the
passion of the parvenu and the pride of the aristocrat. Broad acres are a
patent of nobility; and no man but feels more, of a man in the world if
he have a bit of ground that he can call his own. However small it is on
the surface, it is four thousand miles deep; and that is a very handsome
property. And there is a great pleasure in working in the soil, apart from
the ownership of it. The man who has planted a garden feels that he has
done something for the good of the World. He belongs to the producers.
It is a pleasure to eat of the fruit of one's toil, if it be nothing more than
a head of lettuce or an ear of corn. One cultivates a lawn even with
great satisfaction; for there is nothing more beautiful than grass and turf
in our latitude. The tropics may have their delights, but they have not
turf: and the world without turf is a dreary desert. The original Garden
of Eden could not have had such turf as one sees in England. The
Teutonic races all love turf: they emigrate in the line of its growth.
To dig in the mellow soil-to dig moderately, for all pleasure should be
taken sparingly--is a great thing. One gets strength out of the ground