When I was reading the Georgics with my boys, we came upon the word bufo (toad), and I told them with much gusto that that was the only place in the language where the word occurs.  I had come upon this statement in a book that they did not have.  Their looks spoke their admiration for the schoolmaster who could speak with authority.  After they had gone their ways, two to Porto Rico, one to Chili, another to Brazil, and others elsewhere, I came upon the word bufo again in Ovid.  I am still wondering what a schoolmaster ought to do in a case like that.  Even if I had written to all those fellows acknowledging my error, it would have been too late, for they would, long before, have circulated the report all over South America and the United States that there is but one toad in the Latin language.  If I hadn’t believed everything I see in print, hadn’t been so cock-sure, and hadn’t been so ready to parade borrowed plumage as my own, all this linguistic coil would have been averted.  I suppose Mr. Henderson would send me to jail again for this.  I certainly didn’t do my best, and therefore I am immoral, and therefore a sinner; quad erat demonstrandum.

So, I suppose, if I’m to save my soul, I must gather manna every day, and if I find the value of x to-day, I must find the value of a bigger x to-morrow.  Then, too, I suppose I’ll have to choose between Mrs. Wiggs and Emerson, between the Katzenjammers and Shakespeare, and between ragtime and grand opera.  I am very certain growing corn gives forth a sound only I can’t hear it.  If my hearing were only acute enough I’d hear it and rejoice in it.  It is very trying to miss the sound when I am so certain that it is there.  The birds in my trees understand one another, and yet I can’t understand what they are saying in the least.  This simply proves my own limitations.  If I could but know their language, and all the languages of the cows, the sheep, the horses, and the chickens, what a good time I could have with them.  If my powers of sight and hearing were increased only tenfold, I’d surely find a different world about me.  Here, again, I can’t find the value of x, try as I will.

The disquieting thing about all this is that I do not use to the utmost the powers I have.  I could see many more things than I do if I’d only use my eyes, and hear things, too, if I’d try more.  The world of nature as it reveals itself to John Burroughs is a thousand times larger than my world, no doubt, and this fact convicts me of doing less than my best, and again the jail invites me.

CHAPTER XV

HOEING POTATOES