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