The soil of the University town is divided into patches of sandy and of
clayey ground. The Common and the College green, near which the old
house stands, are on one of the sandy patches. Four curses are the local
inheritance: droughts, dust, mud, and canker-worms. I cannot but think
that all the characters of a region help to modify the children born in
it. I am fond of making apologies for human nature, and I think I could
find an excuse for myself if I, too, were dry and barren and muddy-witted
and "cantankerous,"--disposed to get my back up, like those other natives
of the soil.

I know this, that the way Mother Earth treats a boy shapes out a kind of
natural theology for him. I fell into Manichean ways of thinking from
the teaching of my garden experiences. Like other boys in the country, I
had my patch of ground, to which, in the spring-time, I entrusted the
seeds furnished me, with a confident trust in their resurrection and
glorification in the better world of summer. But I soon found that my
lines had fallen in a place where a vegetable growth had to run the
gauntlet of as many foes and dials as a Christian pilgrim. Flowers would
not Blow; daffodils perished like criminals in their cone demned caps,
without their petals ever seeing daylight; roses were disfigured with
monstrous protrusions through their very centres,--something that looked
like a second bud pushing through the middle of the corolla; lettuces and
cabbages would not head; radishes knotted themselves until they looked
like centenerians' fingers; and on every stem, on every leaf, and both
sides of it, and at the root of everything that dew, was a professional
specialist in the shape of grub, caterpillar, aphis, or other expert,
whose business it was to devour that particular part, and help order the
whole attempt at vegetation. Such experiences must influence a child
born to them. A sandy soil, where nothing flourishes but weeds and evil
beasts of small dimensions, must breed different qualities in its human