Society and solitude: Twelve chaptersEmerson, Ralph Waldo
Philosophy
Society and solitude: Twelve chapters
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
American essays -- 19th century
The chemist comes to his aid every year by following out some new hint
drawn from nature, and now affirms that this dreary space occupied by
the farmer is needless: he will concentrate his kitchen-garden into a
box of one or two rods square, will take the roots into his laboratory;
the vines and stalks and stems may go sprawling about in the fields
outside, he will attend to the roots in his tub, gorge them with food
that is good for them. The smaller his garden, the better he can feed
it, and the larger the crop. As he nursed his Thanksgiving turkeys on
bread and milk, so he will pamper his peaches and grapes on the viands
they like best. If they have an appetite for potash, or salt, or iron,
or ground bones, or even now and then for a dead hog, he will indulge
them. They keep the secret well, and never tell on your table whence
they drew their sunset complexion or their delicate flavors.
See what the farmer accomplishes by a cartload of tiles: he alters
the climate by letting off water which kept the land cold through
constant evaporation, and allows the warm rain to bring down into
the roots the temperature of the air and of the surface-soil; and he
deepens the soil, since the discharge of this standing water allows
the roots of his plants to penetrate below the surface to the subsoil,
and accelerates the ripening of the crop. The town of Concord is
one of the oldest towns in this country, far on now in its third
century. The selectmen have once in every five years perambulated the
boundaries, and yet, in this very year, a large quantity of land has
been discovered and added to the town without a murmur of complaint
from any quarter. By drainage we went down to a subsoil we did not
know, and have found there is a Concord under old Concord, which we are
now getting the best crops from; a Middlesex under Middlesex; and, in
fine, that Massachusetts has a basement story more valuable, and that
promises to pay a better rent, than all the superstructure. But these
tiles have acquired by association a new interest. These tiles are
political economists, confuters of Malthus and Ricardo; they are so
many Young Americans announcing a better era,--more bread. They drain
the land, make it sweet and friable; have made English Chat Moss a
garden, and will now do as much for the Dismal Swamp. But beyond this
benefit, they are the text of better opinions and better auguries for
mankind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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