tting 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,