The love of dirt is among the earliest of passions, as it is the latest.
Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are
dirty, we are pure. Fondness for the ground comes back to a man after
he has run the round of pleasure and business, eaten dirt, and sown
wild-oats, drifted about the world, and taken the wind of all its
moods. The love of digging in the ground (or of looking on while he pays
another to dig) is as sure to come back to him as he is sure, at last,
to go under the ground, and stay there. To own a bit of ground, to
scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds and watch, their renewal of life,
this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing
a man can do. When Cicero writes of the pleasures of old age, that of
agriculture is chief among them:
“Venio nunc ad voluptates agricolarum, quibus ego incredibiliter
delector: quae nec ulla impediuntur senectute, et mihi ad sapientis
vitam proxime videntur accedere.” (I am driven to Latin because New York
editors have exhausted the English language in the praising of spring,
and especially of the month of May.)
Let us celebrate the soil. Most men toil that they may own a piece of
it; they measure their success in life by their ability to buy it. It is
alike the passion of the parvenu and the pride of the aristocrat. Broad
acres are a patent of nobility; and no man but feels more, of a man in
the world if he have a bit of ground that he can call his own. However
small it is on the surface, it is four thousand miles deep; and that is
a very handsome property. And there is a great pleasure in working in
the soil, apart from the ownership of it. The man who has planted a
garden feels that he has done something for the good of the World. He
belongs to the producers. It is a pleasure to eat of the fruit of one's
toil, if it be nothing more than a head of lettuce or an ear of corn.
One cultivates a lawn even with great satisfaction; for there is nothing
more beautiful than grass and turf in our latitude. The tropics may have
their delights, but they have not turf: and the world without turf is a
dreary desert. The original Garden of Eden could not have had such turf
as one sees in England. The Teutonic races all love turf: they emigrate
in the line of its growth.
To dig in the mellow soil-to dig moderately, for all pleasure should be
taken sparingly--is a great thing. One gets strength out of the ground
as often as one really touches it with a hoe. Antaeus (this is
a classical article) was no doubt an agriculturist; and such a
prize-fighter as Hercules could n't do anything with him till he got
him to lay down his spade, and quit the soil. It is not simply beets
and potatoes and corn and string-beans that one raises in his well-hoed
garden: it is the average of human life. There is life in the ground; it
goes into the seeds; and it also, when it is stirred up, goes into the
man who stirs it. The hot sun on his back as he bends to his shovel and
hoe, or contemplatively rakes the warm and fragrant loam, is better than
much medicine. The buds are coming out on the bushes round about; the
blossoms of the fruit trees begin to show; the blood is running up the
grapevines in streams; you can smell the Wild flowers on the near bank;
and the birds are flying and glancing and singing everywhere. To the
open kitchen door comes the busy housewife to shake a white something,
and stands a moment to look, quite transfixed by the delightful sights
and sounds. Hoeing in the garden on a bright, soft May day, when you are
not obliged to, is nearly equal to the delight of going trouting.
Blessed be agriculture! if one does not have too much of it. All
literature is fragrant with it, in a gentlemanly way. At the foot of the
charming olive-covered hills of Tivoli, Horace (not he of Chappaqua)
had a sunny farm: it was in sight of Hadrian's villa, who did landscape
gardening on an extensive scale, and probably did not get half as much
comfort out of it as Horace did from his more simply tilled acres. We
trust that Horace did a little hoeing and farming himself, and that his
verse is not all fraudulent sentiment. In order to enjoy agriculture,
you do not want too much of it, and you want to be poor enough to have
a little inducement to work moderately yourself. Hoe while it is spring,
and enjoy the best anticipations. It is not much matter if things do not
turn out well.