hand, before they come on in heavy and determined assault.  There are already signs of an internecine fight with the devil-grass, which has intrenched itself in a considerable portion of my garden-patch.  It contests the ground inch by inch; and digging it out is very much such labor as eating a piece of choke-cherry pie with the stones all in.  It is work, too, that I know by experience I shall have to do alone.  Every man must eradicate his own devil-grass.  The neighbors who have leisure to help you in grape-picking time are all busy when devil-grass is most aggressive.  My neighbors’ visits are well timed:  it is only their hens which have seasons for their own.

I am told that abundant and rank weeds are signs of a rich soil; but I have noticed that a thin, poor soil grows little but weeds.  I am inclined to think that the substratum is the same, and that the only choice in this world is what kind of weeds you will have.  I am not much attracted by the gaunt, flavorless mullein, and the wiry thistle of upland country pastures, where the grass is always gray, as if the world were already weary and sick of life.  The awkward, uncouth wickedness of remote country-places, where culture has died out after the first crop, is about as disagreeable as the ranker and richer vice of city life, forced by artificial heat and the juices of an overfed civilization.  There is no doubt that, on the whole, the rich soil is the best:  the fruit of it has body and flavor.  To what affluence does a woman (to take an instance, thank Heaven, which is common) grow, with favoring circumstances, under the stimulus of the richest social and intellectual influences!  I am aware that there has been a good deal said in poetry about the fringed gentian and the harebell of rocky districts and waysides, and I know that it is possible for maidens to bloom in very slight soil into a wild-wood grace and beauty; yet, the world through, they lack that wealth of charms, that tropic affluence of both person and mind, which higher and more stimulating culture brings,—­the passion as well as the soul glowing in the Cloth-of-Gold rose.  Neither persons nor plants are ever fully themselves until they are cultivated to their highest.  I, for one, have no fear that society will be too much enriched.  The only question is about keeping down the weeds; and I have learned by experience, that we need new sorts of hoes, and more disposition to use them.

Moral Deduction.—­The difference between soil and society is evident.  We bury decay in the earth; we plant in it the perishing; we feed it with offensive refuse:  but nothing grows out of it that is not clean; it gives us back life and beauty for our rubbish.  Society returns us what we give it.