It is true of the seed and true of the soil in which it grows. This spring I brought in from the garden a frozen lump of earth which I had been subduing, after the fashion of Scripture, with my hoe, these twenty years. Nay, that lump of earth had been in process of being subdued for nigh two hundred years, here on this ancient Hingham farm. It was a bit of regenerated, select soil, which I had sweetened with lime, had nourished with nitrogen and potash, and had planted with nothing but regenerated, select seeds out of this honest catalogue. I put this lump of soil in a pot by a south window and tenderly planted more regenerated, select seeds within its breast—tomato seeds, Jewel, Earliana, and Bonny Best. Then I looked that it should bring forth tomato plants, and it brought forth within the pot, at the end of two weeks, pig-weed, horse-weed, chick-weed, smart-weed, white-weed, rag-weed, knot-weed, tumble-weed, milk-weed, silk-weed, sneeze-weed, poke-weed; goose-grass, crab-grass, witch-grass, wire-grass, spear-grass; burdock, sourdock, and pusley; to say nothing of the swarm of things from Europe, whose infant cotyledons looked innocent enough, but whose roots were altogether evil.
Life offered that lump of mother earth its magical chance and the lump took it. The innate badness of it, this cared-for, chemically pure, subdued piece of garden soil! Its frozen heart a very furnace of smouldering fires; its breast, that suckled the nursing salsify in the summer, a bed of such wild spores as would sow a world to weeds! Given tomato seeds, regenerated, select tomato seeds, Jewel, Earliana, and Bonny Best, the lump of earth brings forth its own original pig-weed, horse-weed, chick-weed, smart-weed, white-weed, rag-weed, knot-weed, tumble-weed, milk-weed, silk-weed, sneeze-weed, poke-weed; goose-grass, crab-grass, witch-grass, wire-grass, spear-grass; burdock, sourdock, and pusley. That is what it brought forth a million years ago. A million years from now, subdued and sweetened and nourished, and planted with regenerated, select tomato seed, Jewel, Earliana, and Bonny Best, and put in a pot in the sunshine of the south window, that lump of earth will bring forth pig-weed, horse-weed, chick-weed, smart-weed, white-weed, rag-weed, knot-weed, tumble-weed, milk-weed, silk-weed, sneeze-weed, poke-weed, goose-grass, crab-grass, witch-grass, wire-grass, spear-grass; burdock, sourdock, and pusley.
“The Form remains, the Function never dies;
While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,
We Men, who in our morn of youth defied
The elements, must vanish;”
—vanish, but not change. The heart of man is not less constant than a clod of earth.
“Lord, we are vile, conceived in sin,
And born unholy and unclean;