4 THE INDIANA WEED BOOK. 



Emperor, Diocletian, was most content while fighting the weeds 

 in his cabbage patch, so all other gardeners and farmers are per- 

 forming man's noblest duty, when they are endeavoring to make 

 two blades of grass grow where but one has grown before. And 

 especially is this true if that one was only a weed. 



Not only for the farmers but also for the schools, where the 

 future farmers will be educated, has the book been prepared. A 

 farm-boy and a teacher has the writer been, and knows somewhat, 

 therefore, the needs of both. While to the minds of most people 

 weeds and poetry may seem to have little in common, the average 

 boy or girl of 15 or thereabouts delights in an apt quotation, a 

 legend or a bit of history which will illuminate the subject in 

 hand. A little poetry and folk-lore, therefore, has been added 

 here and there to give a zest to the work. The farmer, if he be a 

 disciple of Gradgrind and so content only with facts, can blow 

 this off as froth and drink in only the more substantial draught 

 which lies below. 



In this connection we cannot do better than to once again quote 

 Grant Allen, who says: "Our thoughts about nature are often 

 too largely interwoven with hard technicalities concerning rotate 

 corollas and pedicellate racemes; and I for my part am not 

 ashamed to confess that I like sometimes to see the dry light of 

 science diversified with some will-o'-the-wisp of pure poetical imag- 

 ination. After all. these things too are themselves matters for the 

 highest science ; and that kind of scientific man who cannot recog- 

 nize their use and interest is himself as yet but a one-sided crea- 

 ture, a chemical or biological Gradgrind, still spelling away at the 

 woak and beggarly elements of knowledge, instead of skimming 

 the great book of nature easily through with a free glance from 

 end to end. Surely there are more things in heaven and earth 

 than are dreamed of in Gr ad grind's philosophy!" 



"Wayside songs and meadow blossoms; nothing perfect, nothing rare; 

 Every poet's ordered, garden yields a hundred flowers more fair; 

 Master-singers know a music richer far beyond compare. 



Yet the reaper in the harvest, 'mid the burden and the heat, 

 Hums a half remembered ballad, finds the easy cadence sweet 

 Sees the very blue of heaven in the corn-bloom at his feet." 



Van Dyke. 

 INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, Feb. 20, 1912. 



