♦■ 



What is Dirt? 133 



warm day in spring. A portion of this dirt will then become honey. There 

 is no end to the change, — no end to one of Nature's circles. Dirt is 

 food, and food is dirt. How true it is that all flesh is grass, even your 

 own fair face, — grass that perisheth, and becomes again dirt ! " 



Then what is dirt? What but all you see, — even the most beautiful 

 flowers, the cleanest white paper, the gold that formed the yellow band, 

 the finest wheat-flour, the sweetest bread, the most luscious meat, fruit, 

 sugar, honey .? And thou — do not forget that " of dust thou art, and unto 

 dust thou shalt return." 



" Waste not, want not," is one of the truest of the homely old proverbs 

 of ever)'-day use. Yet look abroad upon every hand at the waste, — waste 

 of dirt. We turn rivers into our cities, and through our houses, to wash 

 the dirt into the sea. 



Surely we do not consider the command, " Gather up the fragments, that 

 nothing be lost." 



AVe are continually losing, continually throwing away. We do not 

 consider that every rose a rose would bloom again; that every crumb 

 of bread that we cast so far out upon the waters of the great deep that it 

 cannot return to us in our day and generation is a grain of wheat wasted. 

 In the aggregate, the waste is fearful. It is no palliation of the wickedness 

 of waste to say, "It is nothing but dirt." What is dirt? It is this rose, 

 this leaf, this apple ; yonder growing wheat, now so green and beautiful ; 

 and it will be the waving, golden grain, flour, bread, flesh, human beings, 

 and homes for " the spirits of just men made perfect " in the knowledge of 

 "what is dirt." 



Now let us walk out along this granite ledge, hard almost as adamant, 

 and " eternal as the hills." Yet it is not everlasting: for here the cryptogam 

 eats into this hard substance, and turns it into dirt ; and that will produce 

 — you have seen what. 



Look at these patches of pale green, gray, and brown, looking as though 

 they had been party-colored paints spread upon the face of the rock. 

 Every one of these moss-plants is tearing away little infinitesimal particles 

 of this granite, and converting it into dirt, such as came of the decay of 

 your lovely flowers; only they were more advanced along the great highway 

 of progress from flinty rocks to flowers and food. 



