The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III | Page 8

the broth. Of two evils, choose the
prettier. There's no fool like an old maid. Make love while the moon
shines. Where there's a won't there's a way. Nonsense makes the heart
grow fonder. A word to the wise is a dangerous thing. A living gale is
better than a dead calm. A fool and his money corrupt good manners. A
word in the hand is worth two in the ear. A man is known by the
love-letters he keeps. A guilty conscience is the mother of invention.
Whosoever thy hands find to do, do with thy might. It's a wise child
who knows less than his own father. Never put off till to-morrow what
you can wear to-night. He who loves and runs away, may live to love
another day.

GARDEN ETHICS
BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

I believe that I have found, if not original sin, at least vegetable total
depravity in my garden; and it was there before I went into it. It is the
bunch-, or joint-, or snake-grass,--whatever it is called. As I do not
know the names of all the weeds and plants, 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 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 these roots
somewhere; and that you can not 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 a 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