Hoe

“ The weeds, on the other hand, have hateful moral qualities. To cut down a weed is, therefore, to do a moral action. I feel as if I were destroying a sin. My hoe becomes an instrument of retributive justice. I am an apostle of nature. This view of the matter lends a dignity to the art of hoeing which nothing else does, and lifts it into the region of ethics. Hoeing becomes, not a pastime, but a duty. ”

“ I left my own garden yesterday, and went over to where Polly was getting the weeds out of one of her flower-beds. She was working away at the bed with a little hoe. Whether women ought to have the ballot or not (and I have a decided opinion on that point, which I should here plainly give, did I not fear that it would injure my agricultural influence) , I am compelled to say that this was rather helpless hoeing. ”

“ Polly says she is entirely willing to make a certificate, accompanied with an affidavit, with regard to this hoe; but her habit of sitting about the garden-walk, on an inverted flower-pot, while I hoe, somewhat destroys the practical value of her testimony.
As to this hoe, I do not mind saying that it has changed my view of the desirableness and value of human life. It has, in fact, made life a holiday to me. It is made on the principle that man is an upright, sensible, reasonable being, and not a grovelling wretch. It does away with the necessity of the hinge in the back. ”

“ Hoeing becomes, not a pastime, but a duty. And you get to regard it so, as the days and the weeds lengthen.
Observation.—Nevertheless, what a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it. The hoe is an ingenious instrument, calculated to call out a great deal of strength at a great disadvantage.
The striped bug has come, the saddest of the year. He is a moral double-ender, iron-clad at that. He is unpleasant in two ways. He burrows in the ground so that you cannot find him, and he flies away so that you cannot catch him. ”

“ He thought no more of this untoward event, and went on hoeing until sunset, when, with the other labourers, he shouldered his hoe and prepared to go home.
Never had the distance seemed so great; but at last he found himself by his wife’s bedside. She told him that while he was absent an old woman had called, asking for something to eat, and that as she seemed to have met with some accident, because there was blood running down her face, she invited her in, and told her she might eat what her husband had left untasted. ”

“ The Batonga will tell you that the assegai is the weapon of the man and the hoe of the woman. As one sees the men always armed with assegais, so the women generally carry a hoe; nor is it always just an ordinary hoe for digging. Her husband sometimes procures for her a dainty little hoe, having the handle beautifully ornamented with fine woven wire. This has no other use than to be carried with her as she goes on a journey or to a wailing, and she is very proud of it and nothing will induce her to part with it. ”

“ Nobody is good enough for me, you know. He’d like me to marry some man with a hoe, who would take me to church and Sunday school every sabbath morning, and for a walk to the cemetery in the afternoon, and down to the prayer-meeting every Wednesday night, and on a journey from Genesis to Revelations once a year. It’s too much to expect of a human being. Then the hoes are in the hands of Poles, Slavs, and Italians. ”

“ Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?{16}
Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave ”

“ At the same moment I heard a loud cry for help, and the old lady came hurriedly round the corner of the house, followed by her son, with a hoe in his hand upraised to strike her. Seeing me, he flung the hoe aside and walked sullenly out of the gate. Sitting on the doorstep wiping her tears away with the corner of her apron, the unhappy woman apologized for her evil son in this wise:
“We were always poor, living from hand to mouth. My husband never had any faculty for making a living. I strove and strove to keep my children from want, and keep them looking decent. ”

“ Nothing used to please me more than to see one of these lay enthusiasts snatch up a hoe, as they were very prone to do, and set to work with a vigor that perhaps carried him through about a dozen ill-directed strokes. Men are wonderfully soon satisfied, in this day of shameful bodily enervation, when, from one end of life to the other, such multitudes never taste the sweet weariness that follows accustomed toil. ”

“ The African woman has for generations done her planting with either a digging stick or the small African hoe; the tiresome European comes along and worries the men to buy the big heavy hoe, and one can hear the annoyed woman inquiring of her husband why she is being bothered to give up the implement she has been brought up to use with one hand, for a strange thing which is more expensive and requires two hands. ”

“ So right after dinner, carrying the hoe and a poke of cookies to eat if I got hungry, I started out.
“I was to leave the hoe at the shop and go on down the road to Strangs’ to wait till the hoe was mended. I can remember yet how important I felt going off alone like that. I picked wild flowers and munched cookies and sang all the songs I knew.
“Mr. Carson, the blacksmith, said it would be a couple of hours before the hoe would be ready, and I went down to Strangs’ to wait. But when I got there I found the house all locked up and no one at home. ”

“ The cotton rows butted up against a county road about a half-mile from the house. And in the weeds along the road ditch was a perfect place for the girl to hide a paper bag full of her clean clothes. And after sundown was a perfect time for her to exchange her hoe for that bag of clothes. So, when the other kids put down their hoes for the night, Wes didn't count kids and didn't notice that the big girl was missing. She had hoed to the far end of the rows and had not returned with the others on that last round after sundown. ”

“ Just wake me enough to go out and hoe for you is all I ask—your row and your kind of hoeing."
"Maybe hoeing in my row will make you finish your own in fine style," laughed Rose Mary. "And I think it's wonderful of you to study up our land so Uncle Tucker can do better with it. We never seem to be able to make any more than just the mortgage interest, and what we'll wear when the trunks in the garret are empty I don't see. We'll have to grow feathers. Things like false teeth just seem to be impossible." ”

“ At hoeing-times a picturesque scene is presented, with say from fifty to one hundred men and women abreast, busily plying their hoes; the former in the utmost négligé of a laborer, and the latter with short, scant homespun dresses and leggins, all with broadbrimmed straw hats, or, in the case of the women, the head kerchiefs of the olden time. In the mouth of each is a stick, on the end of which is stuck, and smoking, a small piece of the punk taken from the heart of the oak. ”

“ Linda felt greatly inclined to put down her hoe and run into the house; but that would be so ridiculous. [341] She hoed on in silence, with a very displeased colour on her cheek.
'I see all yar people at the bee: yar too high yarself to go to them kind'er meetings, I reckon, Miss? Wal, I like that. I like pride. Th' ole woman said always, so did Uncle Zack, "Nim, yar above yar means; yar only fit for a Britisher gentleman," they did, I guess!'
'The sun is getting so hot,' quoth Miss Wynn, laying down her hoe. ”

“ Long before the science in the case was discovered, the soil cultivators had learned by observation the necessity of keeping the soil nicely loosened about their growing crops. Even the lanky and untutored aborigine saw to it that his squaw not only put a bad fish under the hill of maize but plied her shell hoe over it. Plants need to breathe. Their roots need air. You might as well expect to find the rosy glow of happiness on the wan cheeks of a cotton-mill child slave as to expect to see the luxuriant dark green of healthy plant life in a suffocated garden. ”

“ Each person has a certain piece of ground allotted to him or her—a ‘row to hoe,’ and the work is got through with singing and mirth. When the chief sends for a number of villagers to hoe his gardens, he entertains them royally with meat and beer. ”

“ The poor young man started forward to part them, but he knew not one from the other, so thinking that the bad one must know how to fight better than his beautiful maiden wife, he suddenly caught up his stone-weighted hoe, and furiously struck the one that was uppermost on the head, again and again, until she let go her hold, and fell back, murmuring and moaning: “Alas! ”

“ Day at length came, and with the dawn, we resumed our journey towards the Potomac. As we passed along the road, I saw the slaves at work in the corn and tobacco-fields. I knew they toiled hard and lacked food; but they were not, like me, dragged in chains from their wives, children, and friends. Compared with me, they were the happiest of mortals. I almost envied them their blessed lot.
Before night we crossed the Potomac, at Hoe's Ferry, and bade farewell to Maryland. At night we stopped at the house of a poor gentleman, at least he appeared to wish my master to consider him a gentleman ”

“ That night the girl came out to me, where I sat on the veranda in the moonlight, and she sat down on the arm of my chair.
"You're not angry at me, are you, Steve?" she said, wistfully, putting her arm around my shoulders. "Not mad, are you?"
Mad? Yes, maddened by the touch of her soft body--such mad devotion as a slave feels. I wanted to grovel in the dust at her feet and kiss her dainty shoes. ”

“ If the stroke or two is taken from one's own work instead of being given in excess of it. One must do one's own hoeing first. That's the foundation of things. A religion that would mean to be 'altogether absorbed' in my neighbour's hoeing would be genuinely pernicious, surely. ”

“ As we traversed the cool woods of Acton, with stout staves in our hands, we were cheered by the song of the red-eye, the thrushes, the phoebe, and the cuckoo; and as we passed through the open country, we inhaled the fresh scent of every field, and all nature lay passive, to be viewed and travelled. Every rail, every farm-house, seen dimly in the twilight, every tinkling sound told of peace and purity, and we moved happily along the dank roads, enjoying not such privacy as the day leaves when it withdraws, but such as it has not profaned. ”

“ Is it the Author, that strange but uninteresting person, or is it Christopher Robin, or some other boy or girl, or Nurse, or Hoo? If I had followed Mr. Wordsworth’s plan I could have explained this each time; but, as it is, you will have to decide for yourselves. If you are not quite sure, then it is probably Hoo. I don’t know if you have ever met Hoo, but he is one of those curious children who look four on Monday, and eight on Tuesday, and are really twenty-eight on Saturday, and you never know whether it is the day when he can pronounce his “r’s.” ”

“ Bots, you know her?
Bots. Is there any gentleman here, that knows not a whore, and is he a hair the worse for that?
Duke. Is she a city-dame, she’s so attired?
1st Mast. No, my good lord, that’s only but the veil
To her loose body, I have seen her here
In gayer masking suits, as several sauces
Give one dish several tastes, so change of habits
In whores is a bewitching art: to day
She’s all in colours to besot gallants, then
In modest black, to catch the citizen,
And this from their examination’s drawn. ”

“ Here you are, and here you stay, until—until I die or until God returns. You are the only woman in it for me when you step into that house there. You are its mistress. I rule here. But what you want shall be yours at any time you want it. You can think of nothing in the world that shall not be brought to you when you ask for it. My servants are yours. Choose from them as many as you like."
"Slaves for your slave? You are full of kindness indeed! But I shall never be what you delicately call the mistress of Tallwoods." ”

“ A hag, that holds high rank, indeed, in lewdness! In her face Are witnesses that testify to filth and wantonness.
When she’s unclean, she bawds; and when she’s clean, she plays the whore: So, all her time, she’s either bawd or else adulteress. ”

“ If Jove be a cuckold, Juno is a whore. This follows by the figure metalepsis: as to call a child, in the presence of his father and mother, a bastard, or whore's son, is tacitly and underboard no less than if he had said openly the father is a cuckold and his wife a punk. Let our discourse come nearer to the purpose. The horns that my wife did make me are horns of abundance, planted and grafted in my head for the increase and shooting up of all good things. ”

“ You scrupled to be happily married to me, and soon after came to England, and was a reputed whore to any nobleman that would come up to your price, and lived with one a considerable time, and was taken by several people to be his lawful wife. If any gentleman should ask me what I have taken to my bed, what must I answer? I must say an inhuman, false-hearted whore, one that had not tenderness enough to own her own children, and has too little virtue, in my mind, to make a good wife. ”