A 'Thousand- Mile TValk 
better than wander over the country and look 
at weeds and blossoms. These are hard times, 
and real work is required of every man that is 
able. Picking up blossoms does n't seem to be 
a man’s work at all in any kind of times.” 
To this I replied, “You are a believer in the 
Bible, are you not?” “Oh, yes.” “Well, you 
know Solomon was a strong-minded man, and 
he is generally believed to have been the very 
wisest man the world ever saw, and yet he con- 
sidered it was worth while to study plants; 
not only to go and pick them up as I am doing, 
but to study them ; and you know we are told 
that he wrote a book about plants, not only of 
the great cedars of Lebanon, but of little bits of 
things growing in the cracks of the walls.” 1 
“Therefore, you see that Solomon differed 
very much more from you than from me in this 
matter. I ’ll warrant you he had many a long 
ramble in the mountains of Judea, and had he 
1 The previously mentioned copy of Wood’s Botany, used 
by John Muir, quotes on the title page I Kings iv, 33: “ He 
spake of trees, from the cedar of Lebanon even unto the 
hyssop that springeth out of the wall.” 
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