The Complete Writings, vol 1 | Page 9

I have to do as Adam did in his
garden,--name things as I find them. This grass has a slender, beautiful
stalk : and when you cut it down) or pull up a long root of it, you fancy
it is got rid of; but in a day or two it will come up in the same spot in
half a dozen vigorous blades. Cutting down and pulling up is what it
thrives on. Extermination rather helps it. If you follow a slender white
root, it will be found to run under the ground until it meets another
slender white root; and you will soon unearth a network of them, with a
knot somewhere, sending out dozens of sharp-pointed, healthy shoots,
every joint prepared to be an independent life and plant. The only way
to deal with it is to take one part hoe and two parts fingers, and
carefully dig it out, not leaving a joint anywhere. It will take a little
time, say all summer, to dig out thoroughly a small patch; but if you
once dig it out, and keep it out, you will have no further trouble.
I have said it was total depravity. Here it is. If you attempt to pull up
and root out any sin in you, which shows on the surface,--if it does not
show, you do not care for it,--you may have noticed how it runs into an
interior network of sins, and an ever-sprouting branch of them roots
somewhere; and that you cannot pull out one without making a general
internal disturbance, and rooting up your whole being. I suppose it is
less trouble to quietly cut them off at the top--say once a week, on
Sunday, when you put on your religious clothes and face so that no one
will see them, and not try to eradicate the network within.
Remark.--This moral vegetable figure is at the service of any

clergyman who will have the manliness to come forward and help me
at a day's hoeing on my potatoes. None but the orthodox need apply.
I, however, believe in the intellectual, if not the moral, qualities of
vegetables, and especially weeds. There was a worthless vine that (or
who) started up about midway between a grape-trellis and a row of
bean-poles, some three feet from each, but a little nearer the trellis.
When it came out of the ground, it looked around to see what it should
do. The trellis was already occupied. The bean-pole was empty. There
was evidently a little the best chance of light, air, and sole
proprietorship on the pole. And the vine started for the pole, and began
to climb it with determination. Here was as distinct an act of choice, of
reason, as a boy exercises when he goes into a forest, and, looking
about, decides which tree he will climb. And, besides, how did the vine
know enough to travel in exactly the right direction, three feet, to find
what it wanted? This is intellect. The weeds, on the other hand, have
hateful moral qualities. To cut down a weed is, therefore, to do a moral
action. I feel as if I were destroying sin. My hoe becomes an instrument
of retributive justice. I am an apostle of Nature. This view of the matter
lends a dignity to the art of hoeing which nothing else does, and lifts it
into the region of ethics. Hoeing becomes, not a pastime, but a duty.
And you get to regard it so, as the days and the weeds lengthen.
Observation.--Nevertheless, what a man needs in gardening is a
cast-iron back,--with a hinge in it. The hoe is an ingenious instrument,
calculated to call out a great deal of strength at a great disadvantage.
The striped bug has come, the saddest of the year. He is a moral
double-ender, iron-clad at that. He is unpleasant in two ways. He
burrows in the ground so that you cannot find him, and he flies away so
that you cannot catch him. He is rather handsome, as bugs go, but
utterly dastardly, in that he gnaws the stem of the plant close to the
ground, and ruins it without any apparent advantage to himself. I find
him on the hills of cucumbers (perhaps it will be a cholera-year, and we
shall not want any), the squashes (small loss), and the melons (which
never ripen). The best way to deal with the striped bug is to sit down by
the hills, and patiently watch for him. If you are spry, you can annoy

him. This, however, takes time. It takes all day and part of the night.
For he flieth in darkness, and wasteth at noonday. If you get up before
the dew is off the plants,- -it goes off very early,--you