VI. THE PARABLE OF JOASH. 107 



.Rosamond's eyes. Whereas Aunt Judy, in charming posi- 

 tion after position, is shown to have expressed all her 

 pure evangelical principles with the prettiest of lips ; and 

 to have had her gown, though puritanically plain, made 

 by one of the best modistes in London. 



3. Nevertheless, the book is wholesome and useful ; and 

 the nicest story in it, as far as I recollect, is an in- 

 quiry into the subject which is our present business, 

 ' What is a weed ? ' in which, by many pleasant devices, 

 Aunt Judy leads her little brothers and sisters to discern 

 that a weed is ( a plant in the wrong place.' 



6 Vegetable ' in the wrong place, by the way, I think 

 Aunt Judy says, being a precisely scientific little aunt. 

 But I can't keep it out of my own less scientific head 

 that ' vegetable ' means only something going to be boiled. 

 I like ' plant ' better for general sense, besides that it's 

 shorter. 



Whatever we call them, Aunt Judy is perfectly right 

 about them as far as she has gone ; but, as happens often 

 even to the best of evangelical instructresses, she has 

 stopped just short of the gist of the whole matter. It is 

 entirely true that a weed is a plant that has got into a 

 wrong place ; but it never seems to have occurred to Aunt 

 Judy that some plants never do ! 



Who ever saw a wood anemone or a heath blossom in 

 the wrong place ? Who ever saw nettle or hemlock in a 

 right one ? And yet, the difference between flower and 

 weed, (I use, for convenience sake, these words in their 



