e. And the grape
is morally no better. I think the ancients, who were not troubled with
the recondite mystery of protoplasm, were right in the mythic union of
Bacchus and Venus.

Talk about the Darwinian theory of development, and the principle
of natural selection! I should like to see a garden let to run in
accordance with it. If I had left my vegetables and weeds to a free
fight, in which the strongest specimens only should come to maturity,
and the weaker go to the wall, I can clearly see that I should have had
a pretty mess of it. It would have been a scene of passion and license
and brutality. The "pusley" would have strangled the strawberry; the
upright corn, which has now ears to hear the guilty beating of the
hearts of the children who steal the raspberries, would have been
dragged to the earth by the wandering bean; the snake-grass would have
left no place for the potatoes under ground; and the tomatoes would have
been swamped by the lusty weeds. With a firm hand, I have had to make my
own "natural selection." Nothing will so well bear watching as a garden,
except a family of children next door. Their power of selection beats
mine. If they could read half as well as they can steal awhile away, I
should put up a notice, "Children, beware! There is Protoplasm here."
But I suppose it would have no effect. I believe they would eat
protoplasm as quick as anything else, ripe or green. I wonder if this is
going to be a cholera-year. Considerable cholera is the only thing that
would let my apples and pears ripen. Of course I do not care for the
fruit; but I do not want to take the responsibility of letting so much
"life-matter," full of crude and even wicked vegetable-human tendencies,
pass into the composition of the neighbors' children, some of whom may
be as immortal as snake-grass. There ought to be a public meeting about
this, and resolutions, and perhaps a clambake. At least, it ought to be
put into the catechism, and put in strong.

TENTH WEEK

I think I have discovered the way to keep peas from the birds. I tried
the scarecrow plan, in a way which I thought would outwit the shrewdest
bird. The brain of the bird is not large; but it is all concentrated
on one object, and that is the attempt to elude the devices of modern
civilization which injure his chances of food. I knew that, if I put up
a complete stuffed man, the bird would detect the imitation at once:
the perfection of the thing would show him