that you might marry, was your only motive for going to work at all."

"I had forgotten that," said the light-minded fellow. "I was thinking of
occupations that would keep one in touch with the earth. A gardener's
occupation keeps him constantly in the charmingest possible sort of
touch with her, and the most intimate."

"Do they call the earth _her_ in English?" asked Maria Dolores. "I
thought they said _it_."

"I'm afraid, for the greater part, they do," answered John. "But it's
barbarous of them, it's unfilial. Our brown old mother,--fancy
begrudging her the credit of her sex! Our brown and green old mother;
our kindly, bounteous mother; our radiant, our queenly mother, old, and
yet perennially, radiantly young. Look at her now," he cried, circling
the garden with his arm, and pointing to the farther landscape, "look at
her, shining in her robes of pearl and gold, shining and smiling,--one
would say a bride arrayed for the altar. Such is her infinite variety.
Her infinite variety, her infinite abundance, the fragrance and the
sweetness of her,--oh, I could fall upon my face and worship her, like a
Pagan of Eld. The earth and all that grows and lives upon her, the
blossoming tree, the singing bird,--I could build temples to her."

"And the crawling snake?" put in Maria Dolores, a gleam at the bottom of
her eyes.

"The crawling snake," quickly retorted John, "serves a most useful
purpose. He establishes the _raison d'être_ of man. Man and his heel are
here to crush the serpent's head."