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your hands the dried bean; you must examine it, and 
make sure that its seed shell is filled entirely by the 
baby plant; you must see it grow plump and big from 
the water which it has been drinking; you must watch 
with sharp eyes for that first little rip in the seed coat, 
and for the putting-out of the tiny tip, which grows 
later into stem and root ; you must notice how the bent 
stem straightens out, and lifts the thick seed leaves up 
into the air; and you must observe how that other pair 
of leaves, which grows from between the seed leaves, 
becomes larger and larger as the seed leaves grow 
smaller and thinner, and how, when the little plant ts 
able to hold its own in the world, the seed leaves die 
away. 
And if day by day you follow this young life, with 
the real wish to discover its secret, you will begin to 
understand what the wise old florist tailor meant when 
he said, — 
“Be you young or be you old, there’s nothin’ sets 
you thinkin’ like a seed.” 
