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.