64 WITH EARTH AND SKY 
of Providence ultimate in blisters. Blisters are 
the plural of blister, a grammatical and mathe- 
matical discrimination worthy of consideration 
and remembrance. Be callous to these observa- 
tions and you may never be a full member in the 
illustrious order of Gardeners of which Adam is 
the somewhat damaged high muck-a-muck. 
The lazy are adepts in the art of excuse. The 
saying of the wise man was that the prudent 
man seeth the danger and hideth himself. The 
aphorism of the indolent man is “The lazy man 
seeth the work and maketh an excuse.” He find- 
eth cause of absence. He conjureth up reasons 
why certain lines of effort will in the nature of 
the case be futile and, so, an unproductive toil. 
Chickens, forsooth! Shall a few chickens de- 
feat a man of assured industry? Put it this 
way, Shall the man who pays the rent on his 
house abdicate headship thereof to a few chickens? 
Is he chicken hearted? Then are there two 
chickens, he and the other one. Your neighbor’s 
chiekens! what a dull man a lazy man is. His 
doctrine stops not at his hands, but slowly— 
always slowly; the lazy man never does anything 
other than slowly, “Go slow,” being his motto 
—slowly lets his brain move with many a rest 
and so he seldom getteth at the truth. He is 
somewhere behind the facts, somewhere a long 
way behind them. Shall a gardener, successor of 
Adam I, fear a few chickens, and their itching 
ways offer impediment to a real gardener? But 
