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.
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