18 WITH EARTH AND SKY 
seeing I have lived with myself so long who 
am packed with faults as a locust with thorns, 
who am I to be uppish with others’ faults? I 
do not admire the dandelion in all its activities. 
To be candid, its desire for posterity is a good 
deal too pragmatical and dogmatical. Nothing 
can stay its maternal instinct. However low you 
shave your lawn, the dandelion will, with mock 
humility, adjust its stature to your mowing, 
by rushing from leaf to bloom and from bloom 
to seed in a jiffy, and the gauze-winged seed 
floats away to keep the dandelion race alive. 
But bethink you, stern critic, *tis instinct. And 
can we as Christians quarrel with instinct? We 
may reason with reason but we do not reason 
with instinct. Instinct does not argue: it pro- 
ceeds. No one in his senses argues with a bee 
concerning the highway he takes across the sky 
when flying, honey-burdened, from flowers to hive: 
so the dandelion instinctively wages war for im- 
mortality. She cannot be converted. Perpetuate 
her species she will. 
Some use dandelions for greens. They are 
esculent; and for one I like to see woman and 
child, basket on arm and knife in hand, wander 
over fields of the new spring, out to gather a pot 
of greens for dinner. The spring appetite is in 
the search. They have been eating canned 
goods all winter and know when they want a 
change. Really is not this call of the appetite 
for spring vegetables a sensible procedure, and 
