surface of the earth. I know more about gardens than railway shareholders
seem to know about railways: for at least I know that it needs a man to
make a garden; a man whose name is Adam. But as I walked on that grass my
ignorance overwhelmed me--and yet that phrase is false, because it
suggests something like a storm from the sky above. It is truer to say
that my ignorance exploded underneath me, like a mine dug long before; and
indeed it was dug before the beginning of the ages. Green bombs of bulbs
and seeds were bursting underneath me everywhere; and, so far as my
knowledge went, they had been laid by a conspirator. I trod quite
uneasily on this uprush of the earth; the Spring is always only a fruitful
earthquake. With the land all alive under me I began to wonder more and
more why this man, who had made the garden, did not own the garden. If I
stuck a spade into the ground, I should be astonished at what I found
there...and just as I thought this I saw that the gardener was astonished
too.

Just as I was wondering why the man who used the spade did not profit by
the spade, he brought me something he had found actually in my soil. It
was a thin worn gold piece of the Georges, of the sort which are called, I
believe, Spade Guineas. Anyhow, a piece of gold.

If you do not see the parable as I saw it just then, I doubt if I can
explain it just now. He could make a hundred other round yellow fruits:
and this flat yellow one is the only sort that I can make. How it came
there I have not a notion--unless Edmund Burke dropped it in his hurry to
get back to Butler's Court. But there it was: this is a cold recital of
facts. There may be a whole pirate's treasure lying under the earth there,
for all I know or care; for there is no interest in a treasure without a
Treasure Island to sail to. If there is a treasure it will never be found,
for I am not interested in wealth beyond the dreams of avarice since I