And I pointed with the top of my umberel at a weed growin' by the
side of the road, and sez I, "When you tell me jest how that weed
draws out of the back ground jest the ingredients she needs to
make her blue foretop, and her green gown, then I'll tell you all
about this secret that Nater holds back from us a spell, but will
reveel to us when the time comes."

"Oh shave!" sez Josiah, "I guess I know all about a jimson weed.
Why they groin; that is all there is about them. They grow, dumb
'em. I guess if you'd broke your back as many times as I have a
pullin' 'em up, yon would know all about' em. Dumb their dumb
picters," sez he, a scowlin' at 'em.

It wuz the same kind of weed that growed in our onion beds. I
recognized it. Them and white daisies, our garden wuz overrun by
'em both.

But I sez, "Can you tell how the little seed of this weed goes
down into the earth and selects jest what she wants out of the
great storehouse below? She never comes out in a pink head-dress
or a yellow gown. No, she always selects what will make the blue.
It shows that it has life, intelligence, or else it couldn't think,
way down under the ground, and grope in the dark, but always
gropin' jest right, always a thinkin' the right thing, never, never
in the hundreds and thousands of years makin' a mistake. Why, you
couldn't do it, Josiah Allen, nor I couldn't.

"And we set and see these silent mysteries a goin' on right at
our door-step day by day, and year by year, and think nothin' of
it, because it is so common. But if anything else, some new law,