6O MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 



vin. I lavished upon him an enthusiastic fond- 

 ness. I told him that he had no fault ; that the 

 one action that I had called a vice was an heroic 

 exhibition of regard for my interests. I bade 

 him go and do likewise continually. I now saw 

 how much better instinct is than mere unguided 

 reason. Calvin knew. If he had put his opin- 

 ion into English (instead of his native cat- 

 alogue), it would have been : " You need not 

 teach your grandmother to suck eggs." It was 

 only the round of Nature. The worms eat a nox- 

 ious something in the ground. The birds eat the 

 worms. Calvin eats the birds. We eat no, 

 we do not eat Calvin. There the chain stops. 

 When you ascend the scale of being, and come to 

 an animal that is, like ourselves, inedible, you 

 have arrived at a result where you can rest. Let 

 us respect the cat. He completes an edible chain. 

 I have little heart to discuss methods of rais- 

 ing peas. It occurs to me that I can have an 



