to hundreds of thousands!

Many think of the soil only in connection with the sad words of the
burial service--"Earth to earth, ashes to ashes." Let us, while we
may, gain more cheerful associations with our kindred dust. For a time
it can be earth to strawberry blossoms, ashes to bright red berries,
and their color will get into our cheeks and their rich subacid juices
into our insipid lives, constituting a mental, moral, and physical
alterative that will so change us that we shall believe in evolution
and imagine ourselves fit for a higher state of existence. One may
delve in the earth so long as to lose all dread at the thought of
sleeping in it at last; and the luscious fruits and bright-hued
flowers that come out of it, in a way no one can find out, may teach
our own resurrection more effectually than do the learned theologians.

We naturally feel that some good saints in the flesh, even though they
are "pillars of the church," need more than a "sea-change" before they
can become proper citizens of "Jerusalem the Golden;" but having
compared a raspberry bush, bending gracefully under its delicious
burden, with the insignificant seed from which it grew, we are ready
to believe in all possibilities of good. Thus we may gather more than
berries from our fruit-gardens. Nature hangs thoughts and suggestions
on every spray, and blackberry bushes give many an impressive scratch
to teach us that good and evil are very near together in this world,
and that we must be careful, while seeking the one, to avoid the
other. In every field of life those who seek the fruit too rashly are
almost sure to have a thorny experience, and to learn that prickings
are provided for those who have no consciences.

He who sees in the world around him only what strikes the eye lives in