It may be that I have never read to the core any one grand, representative book. How, indeed, amid the tumult and toss of our sea-sick life, is one to do so? How, again, while the presses of all literary capitals swarm with books that in one way or another demand attention, shall one do justice to books which are to be read as life is lived,—notin a minute? Only by some hardihood can one pronounce it possible. But if to any great book I have done this justice, it is to that above named.
At the first reading, "Wilhelm Meister," as a whole, was quite opaque to me, while some of the details were unpleasing, and the coolness of tone seemed to betoken coldness of heart; and it was only the observations and aphorisms, scattered like a profusion of pearls through the work, that drew me to it a second time. On a second reading, a year later, I began to see that the characters were representative of permanent classes,—that they were not only "samples to judge of," as Carlyle says, but samples by which to judge of human nature. At a third reading, after another interval, I began to get some glimpse of a total significance. And when, a year later, I took the book with me to the coast of Maine, andlivedwith it, in-doors and out, for a solid month, this significance came forth clearly, and made that month's reading almost equivalent to a great experience.
It is now nearly ten years, since, chiefly for my own behoof, but also not without an ultimate eye to publication, I drew up a formal statement of that which the book stood for to my mind. Time has added much to that material; for the work steadily grew upon me, and now and then extorted, as it were, notes, special dissertations, word-clutches at the meaning of the whole. And now, taking a hint from the handsome new edition, I propose to smelt this rough ore and send it forth, to fare as it may with the readers of the "Atlantic." The liberal editor allows me two papers of not far from ten pages each, in which to make this statement,—not, one sees, without some tolerant wish that a smaller space had sufficed. But even now I cast aside half my material, and double my labor in seeking brevity for the rest.
The typical history of growth in a human spirit,—"Wilhelm Meister" is that. Can you conceive of a theme more enticing? And this, too, treated by one of the master minds of the world. Why do not we shut up our shops, and leave the streets deserted, till the import of this has been exhausted? Who canaffordto pass it by? Precious, indeed, must be his time, who for this has none!
The history, I said, is typical. Botanists picture for us a plant which represents theideaof all vegetable form. Goethe, who led botanists to this central treatment, here takes up growth in a human soul, and proceeds with it in a similar way. He recognizes those spiritual forces which, obscurely or visibly, work in all; he recognizes equally the conditions, inward and outward, under which growth takes place; he depicts these in their advent, their collisions, their interplay, their result.
A spiritual physiology we may name it. He gives not merely the typical form, but also the working processes, and thetypeof these. Nor does he merely enumerate and describe these, after the manner of science, but pictures them in their total action and final unity. Of such a work, wrought out with so much of penetration and power, one can speak coolly enough only by effort.
But the whole is not yet said. Not only does he delineate the idea of growth in man, but he assumes this as the central use and meaning of the world. "Positive philosophy" will groan. Give it the smelling-bottle, and leave it. Goethe does not deign it even a denial; without pausing to say, he sovereignly assumes, that Nature, asher supreme function, is the school-mistress of man. For the results enshrined in his spirit, suns shine, worlds wheel, and systems "move in mystic dance, not without song." Through the long toil out of chaos to orderly completion and green fertility, Nature bore in her heart one constant, inspiring hope,—at last to educate a man. To this end are all times and seasons; to this end are government, property, labor, rest, pain, and peace; the world of things and the world of events alike draw meekly near to the crescent soul, and tender to it their total result, saying,—"In thee, only in thee, do we come at length to use."
This, then, is the task at which Goethe toiled for many an earnest year. He will read through world to man, and through all man's fortunes, inward and outward, to the complete constitution and perfect architectures of his spirit. Let him succeed in that, and the word of words for our century and for many centuries is spoken. "Positive philosophy," with complacent sciolism, may still coldly asseverate that the world is a dead congeries of "laws," into whose realm man is cast to take pot-luck in the universe; but we shall know better. The worldling may still find all good and all evil in the mere fortunes of man; we shall see beyond these. The fatalist may persist in regarding limits and conditions as the all in all of life; we shall see them as a foothold for growth. Once that the spirit of man appears as the final recipient and vessel of uses, the orderly emptiness of world-law is filled with a meaning, while the wild welter of man's fortunes and the rigid fixity of his conditions find alike sufficing centre around which their orbit is drawn.
Observe, however, that we have here no piece of system-making. Goethe does not attempt a final scientific theory of existence. Hepictureslife from this point of view. If you can feel the verity in this picture, you may then feel the same verity in that picture which Another has painted, namely, in life itself.
Observe, once more, that even here life is depicted only fromoneof its two poles, and that, perhaps, the lesser. The theme is Growth, and this growth is considered as proceeding from definite elements contained in man's being, and proceeding to definite results still contained in his being. "Faust" assumes the opposite pole. Its theme is Destiny. It regards man's life as sweeping down upon him from heights above his thought, and proceeding to ends beyond his imagination. His existence appears as fashioned in essence and end by predestinating power, and the Eternal "takes the responsibility."
The artist must choose his point of view. It is impossible to paint the house at once from the inside and from the outside. "Faust" is properly an epic poem; "Wilhelm Meister" is a prose epic,—and prose, not from lack of metre, but precisely from its point of view. It treats life, not as proceeding from the bosom and moving to the ends of benign Destiny, but as contained in thought, will, character, aspiration, love, and as contingent, rather than eternally predestined, in its result. Much of religious grandeur, therefore,—to the great disgust of Novalis,—it loses; much of economic value it gains. A prose picture: yet even here we read through all else to man, and through all else in man himself to the upbuilding of his spirit. As Goethe reads life, let us see if we can read his book.
We assume, then, his point of view. Growth,—our eyes are given us that we may see this as the end, all else as material and means. Prices and kingdoms may rise or fall; we are not indifferent; but the immortal architectures of man's spirit are priceless, and here the sceptres are indeed held by divine right.
What, now,—every one will hasten to question,—what are the chief forces that induce or regulate growth? What is their typical order in appearance and combination? What is the complete result? To these questionsWilhelm Meisteris Goethe's answer.
The first place in the list of producingforces is given by him to Imagination. He makes Wilhelm describe, with elaborate and lingering detail, a puppet-show which in childhood enchanted him, and whose mechanism he afterwards possessed and managed with enduring fascination. Mariana yawns in listening; the lounging novel-reader will yawn too. But under this tedious triviality, as the reader of stock-novels will deem it, lurks a meaning serious enough to entice all save those who are indeed trivial. It indicates the play-instinct in children as the first fountain of growth. Nature justifies Goethe. How grave and absorbed are children at their play! With what touching implicit faith do they assume this as something that pays for its costs! Crabtree scowls; Moneybags pooh-poohs; but Nature is too strong for them, and the children play on. It is significant. In truth, a child's faculty for play, that is, for imaginative engagement, is the prime measure of his capacity for growth. Follow his play, you who would know him,—follow it with studious, sympathetic eye; for in the range and depth of imaginative interest it displays you read the promise of his being. The child that is not fascinated by his fancies is of a meagre nature, and will come to nothing great.
Whyis imagination so concerned in growth? That I call a delightful question, and could run with rejoicing to answer it; but here, not without effort, I must pass it by. There is more to be said upon it than we have space for now: some other day. Enough now that imaginationisso concerned with growth; enough that Nature, by the being of every child born into the world, makes oath to the fact.
But there is a spice of devil in this angel. Of old, when the sons of God came together, Satan came with them; and still, when the primal powers of man's soul assemble to perform their grand act of worship, which is the complete upbuilding of a human spirit, Factitious Tendency, the father of mischief, is punctually at hand. So in young Wilhelm. He craves freeplayfor the divine energies of his being. But the hard actual world resists him; instead of offering itself humbly as a vehicle for his fine imaginings, it tries to make a mere tool ofhim. So he flies from it in scorn. The cold, spacious emptiness of his father's life, the shrivelled content of old Werner's,—these show him the quality of real life. Fie upon reality, then! He will away, and find a concocted play-world, where all shall suit his purpose, and where he shall have nothing to do but picture forth in beauty his inward being.
He finds this, poor boy, in the stage. There no reality will exist but such as ismadefor his purposes. There his fine imaginations may have it all their own way. There, in heroic costume and by gas-light, his sole business shall be to express sublime sentiments in the most effective manner, while all the surroundings are strictly accessory. How fine to discover an heroic situation dumbly begging him to appear and be its speaking lay-figure!
Makingplay, instead of ennobling work till through that the soul can play,—that is child's play. Finding spiritual deliverance in athere, in a "got-up" situation,—that is romanticism. And it is the representative error of nobly imagining youth.
But lay-figure heroics are not heroism; and the made-up situation proves more straitening than that situation which God has made for all, namely, the real world. The stage is found to be wooden as its own boards. It gives Wilhelm for companions a crew of spiritual incapables, who have excellent appetites at others' cost, who higgle, bicker, sneak away from duty, are good for nothing, and pretend everything; while, but for his escape, it would make his own life a mere cul-de-sac with a slough at the end.
Yet he is boy-wise as well as boy-foolish. His imaginations fertilize, though they mislead him. His impulse to liveoverthe world, rather than under it, is the vital impulse of the human soul.
But long before imagination has proceeded to the results named, anothergrand fructifying force has come to its aid, namely, Love. "The ever-womanly leadeth us on." Love,—it is, we may say, a chemical change in the man, like the conversion of starch into sugar, or grape-juice into wine. Full of sweetness and sweet intoxication, it belongs to the profoundest economies of Nature; and he who with his whole soul and body has once loved is another being henceforth. Acid or even putrid fermentations may set in; but what he was before he cannot be again. Goethe, therefore, follows Nature in placing this next to imagination as a producer of growth,—next in Nature and in Goethe's pages, because its alliance with imagination is so immediate and intimate. He who does not idealize does not love.
But here also is peril. Love, while filling Wilhelm's being with those precious heats which are the blind substance of all chivalry and nobility, clothes the stage with the added enchantment of Mariana's presence, and so bewitches the poor youth with still more of that "false tendency" which is his proper Satan. Moreover, by rushing headlong toward consummation, and overleaping the bounds of prudential morality, it brings both upon Mariana and himself sore retributions. Her, poor child, it hurries to the grave; him it pushes to the grave's brink, and stores even his recovered strength with anguish and a lifelong regret.
Goethe is accused of immorality. He does, indeed, depict grave errors without exclaiming over them, without holding up his hands, or playing any pantomime of horror. Moreover, a love pure in its essence, but heedless in its procedure, he persists in naming pure, though heedless. But he indicates, with a rigor that is even appalling, the retributions which pursue levity and precipitation, not to mention things worse. I have read many books which gave more moralstimulationthan "Wilhelm Meister"; I have never read any which, while frankly acknowledging that Nature's blessing goes more with noble essence than with decorous form, yet indicates with equal power the iron nerve of moral law that runs through and through the world.
And now, as third performer in thisrealdrama of growth, comes forward a redoubtable figure, the Sense of Self. His reputation, indeed, is not of the best. All, it is true, embrace him privately; but most think it decorous to disavow him in public.
On the whole,Iis a very serviceable pronoun; and equally its complement in consciousness is serviceable. Welcome, Ego, to your place! The feeling of Self is the nominative, thenamingcase, in the syntax of consciousness. But, as, by the rules of grammar, the nominative is to be made thesubjectof a verb, so in the grammar of growth this self-feeling is subjected to the grandverbum, the action and total significance of one's existence.
Bring it out, then, clearly, pronounce it with due distinctness and force, that it may be clearly and definitely subjected.
Nature attends to that. She secures the nominative in her spiritual syntax. And so there is a period in earlier life when this feeling of self is getting pronounced.Verypronounced it is sometimes, a little severe in its emphasis upon delicate ears. And, indeed, if it come without adjective, without gentle qualification, almost any hearer must confess that he has known sounds more musical.
In Wilhelm it is sweetly qualified with love and imagination. It appears in luxuriant dreams of the poet's life,—of him who is not merely a pen-poet, but a living lyric, a poet in heart and soul. "And this life of true glory," cries the heart of Wilhelm, "may be mine,mine!" A gentle and magnanimous egoism, but still an egoism. But the due subjection of this self-feeling will come duly; in the qualifications that even now make it lovely the sure promise of that is contained.
Fourth in order appears a much prettier figure, namely, Philanthropy, the loving desire to serve man. It is, indeed, at first, sufficiently sweeping andambitious. No half-way work, no boy's play here! He will regenerate the race; he will ennoble humanity, without sparing one caitiff of them all; he will establish it on some perpetual mount of transfiguration; and all by the magic of stage effect. No boy's play!
All this, too, is noble and vital. With exquisite appreciation Goethe depicts it, seeing well how vital it is in essence,—seeing, too, how vapory it is in form. Who knows better than he that to crave service, and to crave it in love, and to crave it without limit, is of the very substance of all that enriches man? To whomsoever this divine longing is foreign all the profound uses of life are foreign; he is barren as beach-sand.
Humanity, however, is not swung away from its mud-moorings so easily; probably would only go adrift and come to wreck, if it were: witness the French Revolution. Sing, bird, in the tree-tops! but when you fly, think not to make the pines fly with you! It is only by slow vital assimilations that man is ameliorated. We do our best in digging and fertilizing a little about the roots, or in bearing pollen, like bees, from flower to flower. We do our best by a little meek furtherance of Nature. And this meekness of labor is no less necessary for ourselves than for those we would serve. Ambitious world-mending is, on one side, self-flattery.
Meanwhile horrible tragedies of charlatanism, or terrible tragedies of disgust and despair await an incontinent enthusiasm for therôleof Providence.
Wilhelm's nature has now been greatly enriched. But all that has enriched has also imperilled. Imagination, love, self-feeling, and philanthropy have stored his breast with golden wealth; but they are one and all making over that wealth to a false tendency. Long before this, however, Goethe has brought in chastening, tempering forces, by which these riches may be economized.
First, and in the person of Jarno, enters the Critical Understanding. True as steel, cold and keen as steel also, antipathetic to all sentiment, clear and decisive partly by what he has and partly by what he has not, Jarno offers with unsparing rigor to shear away Wilhelm's illusions, not seeing that in these very illusions runs an artery rich in his reddest life-blood.
Critical understanding, the disenchanter,—light without heat or color,—begins at a certain period in nobly imagining and impassioned youth to break through the cloudy glories, and shame all with its cold glare. That sudden skeptic shame! Do you know it, reader? Do you remember moments when all that had glorified life seemed suddenly to stand before you a detected impostor, a beggar playing king, and now stripped to his rags? Ah, me! and how pathetically old and wise the neophyte becomes all at once! He will be fooled no longer, he! Love, friendship, philanthropy,—he has looked under the words, and found all they covered, namely, nothing. Henceforth he will hunt sentiment out of him, as it were a wolf. Henceforth he will measure out his life by hand, and be purely—and barrenly—"reasonable."
Unhappy, could he succeed. A mere life of the understanding is just one degree better than idiocy. Sweep out imagination, and all the angels go with it. To freeze the heated geysers of the soul? It were to freeze the core of the world. Better to be nobly moonstruck than turned into a pillar of salt, even were it Attic salt. Better to be Don Quixote than a very archangel Sancho.
And yet unhappy is the nobly impassioned and imagining soul that can never discriminate, never distinguish between the central suggestions of the soul and the chance directions these may have taken. It is he of all men who needs just this, discrimination. Is there any tragedy like that of Don Quixote? A god blinded by his own light! An Olympian charging upon windmills, while a toad squats aside and grins at the spectacle! The ludicrousness is but the last sting of the tragedy. On the whole, critical understanding must have heed. The divine mania of the soul must listen even to this Sancho with his wise saws. Hardit is for the higher to become pupil of the lower, to accept and use its very contempt, and yet forbear to learn contempt of itself, stooping only to conquer. Yet even this must be. Heat is divine, but cold also is necessary. The cloudy glories of rich impassioned spirits, the vapors that float, scarlet and gold, in their heavens, must strike against the icy mountain-tops of common-sense, that the cold may condense them into fruitful rain. Hence thunder, lightning, storm, and wild commotion in the soul; but hence harvest also. The first great inward struggle is this between heat and cold; and where the heats are tropical, the collision is violent. Yet these contrariesmustboth work into the great economies of life.
Cold—cold prudence and choice—appears first in its embodiment, Jarno, who symbolizes itssecretbeginnings in Wilhelm. But then and there its beginnings are only symbolized. Soon, however, disappointment bitterer than death, with sickness, remorse, horror, enters and chills him to the core. Ah, and so these clouds of glory are only raw vapor and mist, after all! The rainy season has set in. "Let's into the house," says Prudence; "let's box ourselves up nicely, and get some comfort, since that is the whole of life." No, he will not do that; he will stand out, and be drenched, and realize the full extent of his illusion. Henceforth his one employment shall be to taunt his heart with its own hopes, to put all the summer blossom and beauty of his former imaginations beside this wintry death-in-life, and shame them by the contrast.
This period in Wilhelm's life is wrought out in Goethe's picture with extreme power.
But he recovers himself, slowly. And Goethe's great knowledge of human nature is shown in this, that Wilhelm does not regain his ennobling imaginations while holding fast to the cool suggestions of prudence. No, he reverts to the former, forsaking the latter. The cold season has passed over him, and seemingly left nothing behind. With health and joy, his illusions, one by one, one and all, return. I find this true. Oscillation between opposite poles,—how long it lasts! A powerful experience comes, and all seems changed in one's being; it passes, and nothing seems changed. "Is there for me," one might cry, "only this aimless see-saw? To-day Don Quixote, to-morrow Sancho, next day Don Quixote again,—is that to go on forever?" Happy is he, provided his poverty be not his exemption, who has never wrung his hands in utter despair of finding centrality, unity, at last,—a centre where the divine passion and afflatus of the heart are reconciled with the hard-eyed perceptions of common-sense.
But life is not a mere pendulum. Nature works to her ends. There is oscillation, but also growth. And so, though Wilhelm recurs to his illusions, and even embodies them by going upon the stage, the seeds of discriminating judgment are sown in his heart, and are already germinating.
Travel, with observation of men, and the attempt to work with them, sobers him further. He begins to recognize limits and conditions, and to do sowithoutsurrendering his hopes and happy dreams. He perceives, little by little, that there are some men who can give and receive help, and some who can do neither,—some with whom one can nobly coöperate, others whose hands approach his own only to obstruct and entangle. He sees that he himself is limited, and that possibly the world might not fare so much better in his hands than in those of its Maker. It dawns upon him, that, on the whole, he is not here to make worlds, but to work in a limited sphere and for limited results. And yet his hopes and imaginations are not put to shame; for he feels, that, even amid these iron limits of labor and effect, a result of unlimited,absoluteworth is also getting wrought.
And now, in this harmonizing of heat and cold into one tempered economy, in this recognition of limits and conditions, without surrender of inspiring imagination and hope, he approachesthe term of his wandering, and nears home.
This consummation is hastened in what may seem a singular way,—by reading Shakspeare. These matchless pictures of real life give him, as life itself had never given, the feeling ofreal. The sentiment of Reality, for the first time, awakens in power. It is much, almost infinitely much, he perceives, to be just this, real. The smallest reality—so with some astonishment he discovers—affords more scope to imagination itself than any conceivable magnificence of make-belief. Real,—rooted in eternal Nature, with a pedigree older than the stars! Is not any pebble, if we consider its advent into existence and its cosmic relations, enough, not only to occupy, but to beggar imagination? Existence,—is not that the one inexhaustible fact? He feels it so, and in that feeling the contending opposites of his being come to sudden reconciliation.
Reality,—the hard, cold, critical understanding has done no worse than to insist upon that. But it has insisted upon that after its own cold fashion, as a mere frozen surface, giving no warm and fruitful hospitality to the divine seeds of hope, love, and imagination. On the other hand, the angels of Wilhelm's heart have fled away from reality because they accepted this representation. Suddenly they find this their true home. Now, then, they will sow in the clouds no longer. Reality, beneath its hard, limited outside, opens to them its divine bosom, and says, "Ye also are real: sow here."
And now the boards feel thin under Wilhelm's feet. Enough of these. Enough of masquerading. Enough of make-belief heroics: belief, accepting limits and conditions, that on them and out of them it may build the spiritual architectures of life, is heroism. Enough of play-acting: work is the true play. Moral imagination has found its home and its freedom in the real; and therewith the first epoch of his life rounds into completion, passes over its virtue to another, and in his life there is an ending and a beginning.
In what consists this complete beginning? In this, that he now gets his eye on himself in a wholly new way. He sees his being as a spiritual whole, a complete design in the thought of Eternal Nature, which design he is religiously bound to divine and serve. To serve Creative Reality even in the regards he bestows upon himself,—in coming to that aim and action, he, for the first time, beholds his being with a pure eye. "To say it in a word," he writes to Werner, "the cultivation of my individual self, here as I am, has, from my youth upward, been constantly, though dimly, my wish and purpose. The same intention I still cherish, but the means of realizing it are now grown somewhat clearer."[A]
"Selfish" is that? It is not the goal, but it is not selfish. Only as the sense of self is subordinated, only as it not only resigns dominion, but becomes a loyal steward in the household of the soul, happy in obedience, can one arrive at real self-culture,—that is, accept his being at the hands of Formative Nature as a design to beserved. While self-feeling holds one in close grip, he can never so much as see his being in this pure, objective way, any more than he can look back into his own eyes. The very act of receiving it as the farm which he is to till,—as a spiritual whole, to which all parts, all partial acts and interests, and the sense of self among them, are to be subordinated and made serviceable,—this implies not merely a liberation from egoism, but much more, namely, utilization of it. Real self-culture consists in the happy and obedient service ofusesin one's own spirit. The uses of the world, we have said, are enshrined in the spirit of man; when one can freely and faithfully serve these, his life as a whole human being has begun.
Self-culture, in the Goethean sense, is, then, a much nobler and more religious affair than the popular notion makes it. But even this, I repeat, is, in Goethe's view, simply the complete beginning.True, the usual notion is different. Some, that suppose themselves his followers, rest finally in self-culture; many, who think this the goal of Goethe's own life, inveigh against him accordingly. Did men, however, always wait to understand ere condemning, much virtuous indignation would never come to use. Precious is virtuous indignation; nevertheless, here there is for it no suitable occasion. Wilhelm goes on toward spiritual ripeness; we follow his advance.
The next step is symbolized by that charming episode, "Confessions of a Fair Saint," whose relation to the whole work many critics profess themselves unable to see,—indeed, I know not whether any critic has seen clearly what, nevertheless, is clearly there to be seen. Religion is flowering in Wilhelm's soul. He rests softly in Absolute Reality, in That which eternally, infinitelyis. It is a deepeningto infinitudeof his feeling for the Real. From superficial, he comes to divine Reality, and finds this not only sufficing, but inspiring, not only commanding obedience, but blessing, exalting, crowning, making it royal.
This is not directly shown in Wilhelm himself, but symbolized by his interest in the narrative of another. In Wilhelm it is hidden,—a-flowering, but secret. The very design is to suggest that his religion does not comeoutof him, and become formal, but remainsinhim, in vital, creative intimacy with his entire being. For it is one point of Goethe's art to hint at secret processes in the soul by some external representative,—and the appearance of principal personages in this work isalwaysconnected with some suggestion of that kind. They stand for what they are in themselves; they have also their direct influence on Wilhelm; and they also symbolize that which cannot be directly shown in his inward growth.
Wilhelm comes to his knees before Absolute Reality; kneeling, he accepts his being. Self-culture henceforth has got its baptism, freedom its law and its blessing of obedience, which leave it freedom still.
Has the reader some misgiving that I foist this interpretation upon the book? There is not, indeed, a direct syllable to this effect. What assurance, then, that this interpretation is not gratuitous?
This, first,—the "Confessions" arethere; hence are related to the import of the whole. But perhaps the reader thinks, with the redoubtable Mr. Lewes, that the work is not awholeat all, but a piece of patchwork. If so, this reason will not weigh with him.
But my interpretation is conclusively affirmed in another way.The Wilhelm of the seventh book is no longer the Wilhelm of the fifth.We leave him on one side this episode, we find him on the other, and he is not the same man. He has suffered a sea-change; for his keel has been wetted in the waters of Eternity. The Abbé recognizes him with difficulty.
It is the old secret. No man can look on Absolute Reality, and live in the antecedent quality of his life. He is a new man henceforth,—consumed and created.
And now we come to the consummate act and epoch of his life. He has found himself; he is now to give himself, and, in giving, is to find himself anew. He is to lose and find himself in social uses. In this sacred act of social immersion, by which, since it can now be done sanely, he is to be, not dissipated, but divinely assured to himself, his spirit and Goethe's work at last rest.
The key-note to this part of the work is struck in the cool tones of Jarno. "It is right," he says, "that a man, when he first enters upon life, should think highly of himself, should determine to attain many high distinctions, should endeavor to make all things possible; but when his education has proceeded to a certain pitch, it is advantageous for him that he learn to lose himself among a mass of men, that he learn to live for the sake of others, and to forget himself in an activity prescribed by duty."
Wilhelm approaches this higher act by degrees.
First, by an exalted and matured love of woman. It is not here a fume and sweet intoxication in the blood, but a true passion of the soul, a profound yearning toallyhis spirit. By an inward necessity, he must give himself to one other, and from that other receive himself again, made sacred with Nature's baptism. The need of this reciprocation is stronger with him than even his election of a particular person with whom to establish it. So, when it becomes impossible for Theresa to accept his hand, he passes soon to Natalia, to whom, however, his attraction is subtler and older.
On this follows the deep self-devotion of fatherhood. The longing to bestow his soul pushes beyond the love of woman, and looks for another object, where the giving is more simple, because the visible return is less. But here again he does not wish to give himself officiously,—to thrust himself unbidden into the household of another life; he would do it in simple obedience to Nature. Therefore, when of those who seem to know everything he can ask one question and no more, there is just one question which his very soul asks:—"Is Felix indeed my son?"
"Hail to thee for the question!" cries the providential Abbé. "Hail to thee, my son! Thy apprenticeship is ended. Nature pronounces thee free."
Yes, when he craves of Nature, not aggrandizement, but a duty,—when he entreats her commands to bestow of all that is deepest and dearest in his spirit on another, and yet to do it so in simple response to her behest that in all he shall give only what isdue,—then he is free. No self-flattery here; no feeling that he is performing some wonderful piece of self-sacrifice, which puts the universe under obligations to him. He would give all, but give where he owes all, not only in obedience, but in meek thankfulness.
This done, he can go farther. Established indestructibly in the unity of his own being, established also in these devout relationships, he is prepared to enter into ampler relations, carrying into these the same obedience to Nature, the same sense of giving only what is due. Accordingly, he passes into noble mutualities of coöperation, service, and love with his equals, with those superior to himself, and with those to whom he is superior, not defrauded of his being, but secured in its possession, by that self-surrender.
Not at a leap, indeed, does he attain to this dignity of life. Causeless suspicions infest him; again and again he snatches himself back, and retreats into spiritual isolation. Like an uncertain swimmer, who, wading into deep water, draws back in sudden alarm as his feet begin to lift themselves buoyantly from the sands, so he is smitten with jealous fear, and hastens to regain his former foothold, just when his immersion in social use and fellowship was becoming complete. But ever as he grows surer of himself, and ever as he rests more trustfully in eternal Reality, he becomes more capable of yielding trust to those who deserve it, and yielding himself to those unto whom he rightly belongs.
And so lost and found, so self-given and self-contained, so abandoned to the high uses of life, and by that very act saved, by that act secured to himself in spiritual wholeness, Goethe leaves him at the close of theApprenticeship: for of theTravels, which is another mine of suggestion, I do not speak here.
To sum all. The whole work climbs steadily to this consummate act of self-surrender without self-dissipation, without self-flattery, without officiousness, and without reserve. But in order that one may give himself nobly, he must nobly have himself to give. To this end there are prerequisites. First, fructification, a rich development of heats and fruitful powers; and of the nature and order of these Goethe aims to give account. Secondly, a due tempering of these by the cold, faithful severities of understanding and experience. Third, as resulting, a high repose in Reality,—high, because one reposes there, not in base compromise with it or with himself, but in hope, in duty, in imagining heroism of heart.Fourthly and finally, comes a relation to one's own being, at once utterly religious and utterly sane, whereby onecommands himself in obedience to the total law and uses of his spirit. Having achieved this, one may go forward, through further experience and deeper life, to that act of religious and sane self-bestowal, wherein he first becomes, in the full, majestic sense, a man.
FOOTNOTES:[A]The citations are from Carlyle's translation. It is of no use to do over again what is already thoroughly done.
[A]The citations are from Carlyle's translation. It is of no use to do over again what is already thoroughly done.
[A]The citations are from Carlyle's translation. It is of no use to do over again what is already thoroughly done.
September's slender crescent grows againDistinct in yonder peaceful evening-red.Clearer the stars are sparkling overhead,And all the sky is pure, without a stain.Cool blows the evening wind from out the west,And bows the flowers, the last sweet flowers that bloom,—Pale asters, many a heavy waving plumeOf golden-rod, that bends as if opprest.The summer's songs are hushed. Up the lone shoreThe weary waves wash sadly, and a griefSounds in the wind, like farewells fond and brief.The cricket's chirp but makes the silence more.Life's autumn comes; the leaves begin to fall;The moods of spring and summer pass away;The glory and the rapture, day by day,Depart, and soon the quiet grave folds all.O thoughtful sky, how many eyes in vainAre lifted to your beauty, full of tears!How many hearts go back through all the years,Heavy with loss, eager with questioning painTo read the dim Hereafter,—to obtainOne glimpse beyond the earthly curtain, whereTheir dearest dwell, where they may be or e'erSeptember's slender crescent shines again!
September's slender crescent grows againDistinct in yonder peaceful evening-red.Clearer the stars are sparkling overhead,And all the sky is pure, without a stain.
Cool blows the evening wind from out the west,And bows the flowers, the last sweet flowers that bloom,—Pale asters, many a heavy waving plumeOf golden-rod, that bends as if opprest.
The summer's songs are hushed. Up the lone shoreThe weary waves wash sadly, and a griefSounds in the wind, like farewells fond and brief.The cricket's chirp but makes the silence more.
Life's autumn comes; the leaves begin to fall;The moods of spring and summer pass away;The glory and the rapture, day by day,Depart, and soon the quiet grave folds all.
O thoughtful sky, how many eyes in vainAre lifted to your beauty, full of tears!How many hearts go back through all the years,Heavy with loss, eager with questioning pain
To read the dim Hereafter,—to obtainOne glimpse beyond the earthly curtain, whereTheir dearest dwell, where they may be or e'erSeptember's slender crescent shines again!
It must be remembered that we were on the same street with our neighbors, the Tetchy family, and that multitudes of their customers passed our gate on their way to the old established strawberry-garden. When a company of new customers came along in search of the Tetchys, some of them would stop at our gate, and, looking through the open lattice-work, would see the strawberries, and, thinking this the right place, would often come into the house and call for a saucer of fruit. Some of these did so while I was engaged in picking, even pushing through into the garden where I was at work. This publicity was a great annoyance to me, especially as my mother increased it by insisting on supplying all the fruit thus called for. Hence the same parties made repeated visits. My mother thought it as important to cultivate customers as to cultivate strawberries. They called for cream,—as all people must have the best of everything; but having no cow, she bought milk as required, and though no doubt extensively diluted before it reached us, yet it seemed to go down with entire satisfaction.
Thus, without ever anticipating it, we fell heirs to a sprinkling of the profitable business which the Tetchys were carrying on: for, as part of the unintended legacy, my mother appropriated their high prices also. She took such interest in this mode of selling our fruit that I began to fear she would really convert our premises into another strawberry-garden. I confess the temptation was strong, because she thereby secured three times the profit that we could obtain at the market. As it was, she realized thirty dollars during the season from these unexpected customers. But not one of us would listen to the project of a strawberry-garden. Jane was, in fact, too proud to entertain the idea of waiting on the crowd of impudent, loafing young men who frequent such places as openings for getting rid of their money; while Fred declared that his sisters should never come down to the condition of waiters at any table but their own. So my mother was overruled, though she insisted that her little experience with a few customers had fully satisfied her that our ill-natured neighbors were making great profits out of the immense retail trade they were doing.
But if our little household was thus harmonious on the strawberry question, the Tetchys were very far from being on good terms with us. They had as great a run that season as ever. Indeed, we heard that their customers had so increased as to oblige them to purchase fruit in order to supply the demand. How they managed about more cream I never learned,—whether they got a new cow, or whether that with the iron tail was required to do extra duty, was a mystery which the neighbors were never permitted to penetrate. Their customers must have been equally ignorant, as we never heard of their complaining; but I have little doubt that Mrs. Tetchy could tell, to a drop, how much water a quart of milk would bear without the cheat being detected.
It may seem uncharitable to speak thus of one's neighbors, but the Tetchys showed themselves unfriendly to us just in proportion as we gave evidence of beginning to succeed. They might have aided us materially, without injuring themselves in the least. But they hadbecome possessed with the absurd fear, that we, on a single acre and a half, were about raising strawberries enough to ruin their business. Then my mother's having entertained a dozen or two of transient customers was well known to them, for they watched us with unsleeping jealousy; and they were sure we intended to set up another garden. So, although they saw they had a demand for more than their grounds produced, a demand, moreover, that was actually increasing, and this without any abatement in price, yet they preferred procuring their extra supplies from others a great way off to purchasing from us who were close at hand. Such purchases would be just so much encouragement to what they regarded as a rival establishment, which they desired to see suppressed. Hence all intercourse between the families ceased, and we heard nothing but the ill-natured remarks they made about our doings, which other neighbors were kind enough to repeat to us,—the carrying of such things to and fro being considered by some an indispensable part of true neighborly kindness. It is quite probable, however, that these were all pretty well amplified on their way, as I have noted that an ill-natured speech, like a bouncing lie, generally grows by repetition.
But vexatious as all this certainly was, these people were greatly to be pitied. As regarded intelligent horticulture they were altogether in the dark. They took no agricultural papers, and books on gardening were equally unknown upon their table,—the entire literature of the household consisting of the penny newspaper, with piles of sensation novels which the daughters had accumulated. How, from such a dearth of reading suitable to their vocation, could they be expected to be better informed than they were? or, with the peculiar caustic temper that ran through the family, to make friends who might be instructive companions? In agricultural knowledge I was really their superior, having an exhaustless fund of information in the miscellaneous collection I had picked up at the grocer's, of the diversified contents of which there had never been a more painstaking student. By reference to such a source, they would have learned how absurd was their selfish idea that it was possible for me, or even a hundred like me, to overdo the business of raising strawberries, no matter where established, but especially when the fruit was consumed on the very spot where it was produced. I know that this apprehension of producing too much fruit is a mistake of many persons about embarking in the business. But further knowledge invariably corrects it; there is never an over-supply. If, at the beginning of my inquiries, the fear crossed my own mind, it was dissipated by a single conversation with the widow in the market-house.
The horticulturist of this progressive age must not rest satisfied with what he learns on his own ground. There is a vast outside world, full of busy, intelligent minds, not content with things as they find them, but searching, investigating, experimenting, and so successfully, that the horticultural art is largely indebted to them for the amazing progress it has of late years made toward perfection. These great unfolders of some of Nature's profoundest secrets do not hide their lights under a bushel. There is a perpetual interchange among them, by pen, by tongue, and through the press, of the experiences and discoveries of each, the common repositories of all which are the agricultural journals. There collected as in a reservoir, they become fountains of instruction, not only to the pioneer in horticulture, but even to the veteran, and those who refuse to drink thereat will ever continue in the rear of a great army whose march is unceasingly onward. No petty jealousy comes in to mar the harmony of the true votaries of horticulture. There is emulation, but not contention. The heart of such a man enlarges as he pursues his labors, his tastes become refined, his sympathies embrace all others having kindred aspirations; and the successes he may have achieved, withthe processes by which they are to be secured, become the common property of all who are wise enough to appreciate them. Our neighbors were born with no such tastes or impulses as these. That it was so proved almost as unfortunate for us as it was for themselves.
Our first season's profits did not make us rich, as the whole income was only a hundred and sixty dollars. But it showed conclusively that we were able to accomplish something handsome in an entirely new field. The cost of plants and of preparing the ground was a little rising thirty dollars. All that remained over these two items was so much in payment of our own labor, and for this we had never before had a market, as it was the contribution of odd times, except an occasional half-day lost from the factory; but as our earnings there were small, this loss was not of much account. Here, then, was more than a hundred dollars made out of almost nothing. This was equal to the wages of both Jane and myself for a quarter of the year. If a half-acre of strawberries, not yet in full bearing, could do this, it was clear that a whole acre of well-established plants would go very far toward enabling us to abandon our factory-life entirely. This was what we were aiming at: we were willing to work, but preferred working at home. Of course it was simply a question of how much we could make on an acre. My mother was sure there could be no doubt about the matter, if she could be allowed to open a strawberry-garden. She seemed to have given up her long-cherished preference for the needle, and now began to realize that there might be something better. Not one of us, however, would hear to the garden, though we now clearly understood how extremely profitable must be that mode of bringing the producer and the consumer together.
Practice in any art is a wonderful enlightener of the understanding. It thus became quite clear to us that the Tetchy family were living handsomely on the strawberries raised on one acre of land, and cream manufactured principally at the kitchen pump. As usual on such occasions, Fred undertook to prove by his figures how much it was they were earning. I think he made it out about a thousand dollars a year; but as his previous calculations touching our own crop had proved rather deceptive, I did not trust implicitly to his conclusions. But he insisted that it must be so, as figures never lied. I suggested, that, though the figures themselves might not lie, yet that instances had been known of their leading to great lies by others,—not meaning, however, to refer to him.
These were among the new changes of the old topic that now formed the staple of our family discussions. As we had done pretty well with a half-acre, we must have more ground planted. It may appear singular that so small a profit, realized only after a whole year of waiting, should prove so powerful a stimulus to further effort. But I well knew that wealth is not suddenly acquired by agriculture of any kind. The great element of value which distinguishes this over other occupations is that of safety,—slow, but sure. If our profit should appear small to others, it was a great affair to us, and we felt reasonably certain that we could make it four times as large. It was therefore determined to have the remaining half-acre broken up and set out with strawberries that fall.
But no one must suppose that our summer occupation was ended when our crop had been marketed and the profit ascertained. All this was accomplished as July was coming in. Immediately after the vines had borne their fruit, they developed new energies in the putting out of a multitude of runners. But meantime the ground had been taken possession of by a fresh crop of weeds, all of which must be removed, and the surface forked up into mellowness, before the runners would take hold and establish themselves into strong, vigorous plants. We therefore entered on a new campaign against these troublesome interlopers, thoughour hoes were so heavy and clumsy that their unwieldiness fatigued us more than the work itself.
"There goes ten thousand at a pull!" said I to Fred, one day, as he caught hold of a huge thistle with his rake and dragged it out by the roots.
Fred was astounded at this piece of information. He had seen weeds in abundance, but had never gone over the pages of the "Country Gentleman" and the "New England Farmer" as carefully as I had, and hence the thought had never occurred to him that in pulling up a single thistle he was really saving some one else the trouble of getting rid of thousands more.
The subject of this astonishing increase from a single plant thus became a topic for subsequent conversation and research. It being in Fred's line, he looked up several articles about weeds, undertook to extend the calculation, and arrived at results that almost frightened me. A single thistle would produce twenty-four thousand the first year, and five hundred and seventy-six millions the second! and we found that botanists had discovered in all other weeds an approximation to the same amazing power of reproduction. It must not be supposed, however, that every seed will vegetate. Animals and birds consume myriads of them, and other myriads perish under the extreme heat of summer and the equally destructive cold of winter. To some extent Nature thus confines the multiplication of weeds within limits. Botanists assert that these limits are prescribed, and that they cannot be passed. If it were not so, the seed of a single thistle would reproduce itself so rapidly as in a few years to cover with its progeny the entire surface of our planet.
Our ground was singularly troubled with the rag-weed, which we found was immensely prolific. There were numerous other kinds also that came up all over the field, and it appeared to me that those which produced the most seeds threw up the rankest growth. What was greatly to their discredit, none of them produced a flower. So far as I could discover, they performed no other office than that of perfecting a crop of seeds for the sole purpose of next year producing another that would be many thousand times larger. Their stalks and foliage were rejected by cattle, and never came to much as fertilizers. It is probable they have some medicinal virtues, however, as the herb-doctors use them pretty freely. But I could regard them in no other light than nuisances in a strawberry-bed.
So universally are weeds regarded as injurious to agriculture, that laws have been enacted to insure their destruction. In this country it has been made a finable offence to permit the Canada thistle to perfect its seeds. France imposes a heavy penalty on all who are in like manner neglectful of the common thistle. Every man in Denmark who fails to destroy the corn-marigold is severely punished. In the early history of Scotland, whoever "poisoned the king's lands with weeds, introducing thereby a host of enemies," was denounced as a traitor. Unhappily, with us there has been an abundant yield of both. As such instances show how these pests have been regarded by the agricultural world, one would think that it was now time for us to hear of their diminishing in number. But no such diminution can be asserted.
The history of the migration of seeds is full of the most curious statistics. The reviewer of a recent publication makes the following interesting statement.
"The lonely island of St. Helena, for example, at the time of its discovery in 1501, produced about sixty vegetable species. Its flora now comprises seven hundred and fifty species. The faculty of spontaneous reproduction supposes a greater power of accommodation than we find in most domesticated plants. Although every wild species affects a habitat of a particular character, it will grow under conditions extremely unlike those of its birthplace. The seven hundred new species which have found their way to St. Helena within three centuries and a half were probably not in verylarge proportion designedly introduced there by human art. As a general rule, it may be assumed that man has intentionally transferred fewer plants than he has accidentally into countries foreign to them. Tares follow the wheat. The weeds that grow among the cereal grains, and form the pest of the kitchen-garden, are the same in America as in Europe. Some years ago, the author made a collection of weeds in the wheat-fields of Upper Egypt, and another in the gardens on the Bosphorus. Nearly all the plants were identical with those that grow under the same conditions in New England. The change from one locality to another is effected by a thousand casual circumstances. The upsetting of the wagon of an emigrant in his journey across the Western plains may scatter upon the ground the seeds he designed for his garden. The herbs which fill so important a place in the rusticmateria medicaof the Eastern States spring up along the prairie-paths just opened by the caravan of the settler. Thehortus siccusof a botanist may accidentally sow seeds from the foot of the Himalayas on the plains that skirt the Alps. It is a fact frequently observed, that exotics transplanted to foreign climates suited to their growth escape from the flower-garden, and naturalize themselves among the spontaneous vegetation of the pastures. The straw and grass employed in packing the sculptures of Thorwaldsen were scattered in the court-yard of the museum in Copenhagen, where they are deposited, and the next season there sprang from the seeds no less than twenty-five species of plants belonging to the Roman Campagna. In the campaign of 1814, the Russian troops brought in the stuffing of their saddles seeds from the banks of the Dnieper to the valley of the Rhine, and even introduced the plants of the Steppes into the environs of Paris. The Turkish armies in their incursions into Europe brought Eastern vegetables in their train, and left the seeds of Oriental wall-plants to grow upon the ramparts of Buda and Vienna. The Canada thistle is said to have sprung up in Europe two hundred years ago from a seed which dropped out of the stuffed skin of a bird."
As I had never studied the botanical peculiarities of weeds, and, indeed, had no time for scientific study, having both needle and garden on my hands, I regarded their luxuriant growth in my strawberry-ground only in a strictly practical light. The soil was full of nutriment, as my father had left it very rich. If this nutriment were appropriated by the weeds, it would obviously be so much taken from the strawberries. The latter, moreover, when the fruit was swelling to full size, preparatory to changing color, required all the moisture they could obtain. Now weeds are powerful leeches. Whatever they might suck up would consequently be robbery of the strawberries. Thus as nutriment and moisture would fail the strawberries in exact proportion to the growth of the weeds, the fruit would be small in size and inferior in quality, with a corresponding diminution of the market price. In a dry season these effects would be particularly disastrous. These conditions of successful strawberry-culture I had learned from books, from reflection, and from actual experience. Hence my beds were made scrupulously clean and mellow when the plants were beginning to put forth runners. It was a troublesome matter, for some weeks, to keep them in complete order, requiring an hour or two of hoeing daily; but then I found the labor of weeding lasted only during August, as after that month the growth had so fallen off as to be of little consequence. Scarcely any that started subsequently would find the season long enough to mature the seeds. I frequently managed to obtain a glimpse of what our neighbors were doing, to see how my strawberry-culture compared with theirs. Though the whole family had little else to do than to look after their acre, yet I was quite satisfied with the result of my survey. They had quite as many weeds as myself, with the important difference that they did not seem to mind much about getting rid of them.I presume their uniform success had made them careless and lazy. Their hopes had been fulfilled, while the consummation of mine was yet in the future.
The runner of a strawberry, when projected a certain distance, develops at its extremity a tuft of leaves, and having done so, is impatient to throw out roots immediately below the newly formed tuft. To promote the formation of these, the surface of the ground should be made perfectly loose and mellow, so that the rootlets may enter and descend with facility, thenceforward to ramble in search of nourishment and moisture. Thus cared for, and especially if sunk a little below the surface, and held there with a spoonful of earth, the runners will put forth a mass of snow-white roots with incredible rapidity. In a moist soil, or after a shower of rain, they fasten themselves immediately; and thus ceasing to be drains upon the parent plant, by living and growing from their own daily enlarging roots, they will acquire a size and vigor to insure an abundant crop the following season. The first joint being securely rooted, the runner will go on lengthening into a succession of new ones; and if each be promptly anchored like the first, they will become contemporaneous bearers. As one plant will send forth many runners, the careful cultivator can thus cover his ground with a profusion of the thriftiest vines. But when the surface is permitted to remain hard and compact, baked under the sun or trodden under foot, the delicate rootlets are unable to penetrate the unfriendly mass. They are blown about by the wind, useless exhausters of the parent plant; they change color by exposure to the sun and air, and lose their power of extension. Even under the softening influence of rain, which may enable them to secure some feeble holding-ground, they rarely become vigorous plants, while their multiplication is materially limited. If the surface be overgrown with grass or weeds, the runners can gain no hold; and hence, there being no new plants established, the succeeding crop will be smaller than it might otherwise have been. The vigor of the plant thus created from a runner is altogether dependent on the condition of the surface over which it is first projected, and the promptness with which it is enabled to throw out and fasten its roots in a congenial soil. Nature performs wonders for the strawberry; but human care and skill can multiply its capabilities to an extent which even yet is undetermined.
Acting upon these hints, for which I was again indebted to my invaluable agricultural treasury, I took care that every runner, as soon as it threw out a perfect tuft of leaves, should be let down into a little cavity scooped out by a garden-trowel, and sprinkled with earth enough to keep it down. The instinct of the plant was so nice and active, that, as soon as it came in contact with the moist ground below, it threw out roots and took a fast hold. These nourished it into an independent plant, enabling it to project a new joint, which, being similarly covered, formed another plant. Thus attending to them every day, I not only obtained more than were needed for the yet unoccupied half-acre, but secured plants of so vigorous a growth as to insure a good crop the coming season. The ground was broken up and put in nice order in October. Then, after every rainy day, but especially in damp and drizzly weather, a man who understood the business was employed to transfer the young plants to their new location. It was too great an undertaking for me, though I assisted in the operation. My new bed I made an extension of the old one, and began with those plants which had grown from the runners nearest to the parent. As these had been longest in growing, they were the most thrifty and the best. Taking them up carefully on a trowel, with a ball of earth to each, I carried them one by one to the places previously prepared for them by the gardener, being simple excavations about a foot apart, into which we slipped them directly from the trowel, and then drew the loose earth up around the ball, soas to leave no portion of the roots exposed. By making holes for them, the plants were let down quite level with the surface, just as they had stood before transplanting: for strawberries must never be set on a ridge; since, when thus set, the roots, having two surfaces laid open to the action of the sun and drying winds, become parched by exposure, and the plants will frequently perish in consequence. Moisture is the vital principle of the strawberry. Practically speaking, it may be said to be the only manure it ever requires.
This job cost me some ten dollars for hired help, but the gain was worth all that. Not a single plant showed the slightest sign of wilting. Indeed, there was clear evidence that the whole collection was quite unconscious of any change of place. The first rain closed up all cavities around them, thus effectually repairing damages, and their growth having experienced no check, many of them threw out new runners, as if thinking that I wanted them.
It was not an unfeminine occupation, this setting out a strawberry-bed. Neither did I consider it hard work. We could have done it ourselves, if we could have spared the time. So any family of girls can accomplish the same feat, or even a much greater one, when the masculine portion of the labor, putting the ground in order, has been performed for them. I know it soils one's hands to set out plants in the wet ground; but if one could make choice of the kind of dirt she is to handle, I am sure that this sort is preferable to that set free in washing a pile of greasy dishes, or in standing a whole day over a wash-tub. These being established feminine employments, no one thinks of objecting to them; in fact, the sex seems born to them. But strawberry-planting by a young girl like me is a novelty that some may think requires an apology. Yet so far no one had seemed to consider any apology necessary in my case, except our neighbors, the Tetchys.
Long before we had taken up half the plants required for the new bed, I discovered that there were three or four times as many as we needed. My reading had taught me that one of the mistakes of strawberry-growing was that of crowding too many on the ground. The effect would be to make it impossible to get at the weeds and grass with a hoe. A bed in this condition could not be kept clean. In the end, the interlopers would take complete possession and smother out the strawberries, compelling the owner to plough all in together and start with a new planting. I was puzzled to know what was the best course to adopt. I thought at one time of hoeing up the greater portion of the multitude of plants we had so carefully propagated, treating them as so many weeds, so as to be sure of having a fair chance at the remainder. But they were all so vigorous and healthy that I could not bring my mind to have such extensive waste committed. Fred objected to it most strenuously. He said it was impossible for us to have too much of a good thing, and, as usual came to the rescue with his arithmetic. He made it out that we had so many thousand fine plants that I wanted grubbed up. Then he showed that these, if allowed to produce fruit, would yield us so much money, and that this money would enable us to hire a man to keep the ground in the best order. Besides, he said there was no knowing but we might be able to sell a quantity of them. Fred's figuring—always done on paper—had often disappointed us. But it continued to have some weight with me, notwithstanding. It is probable my reluctance to parting with these fine plants was the real turning-point in this dilemma. I had no hope of finding purchasers for them, though it had once been so difficult for me to find sellers. Nevertheless I followed Fred's advice, thinking this time there might be something in it, and let the plants remain.
All these little matters are the result of personal experience: not, of course, acquired in a single season; for even after the strawberry-grower has plantedone bed and harvested one crop, he will discover that he is still only on the threshold of this branch of horticulture. Many of them are the fruit of subsequent experience, while much of all I ever learned is the result of careful study of as many authorities as I was able to consult. Study combined with practice and close observation, together with a passionate determination to learn, and hope ever stimulating to perseverance, has been with me the secret of success. I was now at the close of my first year's experiment. My whole acre was in the best condition. The plants set out the first year were certain to produce twice the former yield, such being the universal experience with the strawberry; while now, with double the extent of ground, and the first half-acre stocked with many times the number of plants originally set, the promise was highly encouraging. I could think of no possible chance of disappointment but a pinching frost that might destroy the blossoms, or a parching drought that might blast the fruit. No work that I had been required to perform had been too hard for me. Most of it had been recreation, while all had been healthful to the body and grateful to the mind. It is true that now and then my hands had been a little roughened by wielding the heavy garden-tools; but we had already determined that our next year's profits should furnish us with new and lighter ones. Thus, satisfied with myself, and buoyant with hope, the winter came upon us; but I passed through it without impatience or anxiety, both my sister and myself continuing the while steadily at the factory.