ON BIG WORDS
I was cutting down the nettles by the hedge with a bill-hook when a small man with spectacles, a straw hat, a white alpaca jacket, and a book under his arm came up, stopped, and looked on. I said "Good evening," and he said "Good evening." Then, pointing to my handiwork, he remarked:
"You find the nettles very difficult to eradicate?"
I said I found them hard to keep down.
"They disseminate themselves most luxuriantly," he said.
I replied that they spread like the dickens.
"But they have their utility in the economy of Nature," he said.
I replied that Nature was welcome to them as far as I was concerned.
He then remarked that it was most salubrious weather, and I agreed that it had been a fine day. But he was afraid, he said, that the aridity of the season was deleterious to the crops, and I replied that my potatoes were doing badly. After that, I think it occurred to him that we did not speak the same language, and with another "Good evening" he passed on and I returned to the attack on the nettles.