Talk about the Darwinian theory of development and the principle of
natural selection! I should like to see a garden let to run in
accordance with it. If I had left my vegetables and weeds to a free
fight, in which the strongest specimens only should come to maturity,
and the weaker go to the wall, I can clearly see that I should have had
a pretty mess of it. It would have been a scene of passion and license
and brutality. The "pusley" would have strangled the strawberry; the
upright corn, which has now ears to hear the guilty beating of the
hearts of the children who steal the raspberries, would have been
dragged to the earth by the wandering bean; the snake-grass would have
left the place for the potatoes under ground; and the tomatoes would
have been swamped by the lusty weeds. With a firm hand, I have had to
make my own "natural selection." Nothing will so well bear watching as a
garden except a family of children next door. Their power of selection
beats mine. If they could read half as well as they can steal a while
away, I should put up a notice, "_Children, beware! There is Protoplasm
here._" But I suppose it would have no effect. I believe they would eat
protoplasm as quick as anything else, ripe or green. I wonder if this is
going to be a cholera-year. Considerable cholera is the only thing that
would let my apples and pears ripen. Of course I do not care for the
fruit; but I do not want to take the responsibility of letting so much
"life-matter," full of crude and even wicked vegetable-human tendencies,
pass into the composition of the neighbors' children, some of whom may
be as immortal as snake-grass.
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