And it is not of much consequence.  The boy goes on his way,—­to Congress, or to State Prison:  in either place he will be accused of stealing, perhaps wrongfully.  You learn, in time, that it is better to have had pears and lost them than not to have had pears at all.  You come to know that the least (and rarest) part of the pleasure of raising fruit is the vulgar eating it.  You recall your delight in conversing with the nurseryman, and looking at his illustrated catalogues, where all the pears are drawn perfect in form, and of extra size, and at that exact moment between ripeness and decay which it is so impossible to hit in practice.  Fruit cannot be raised on this earth to taste as you imagine those pears would taste.  For years you have this pleasure, unalloyed by any disenchanting reality.  How you watch the tender twigs in spring, and the freshly forming bark, hovering about the healthy growing tree with your pruning-knife many a sunny morning!  That is happiness.  Then, if you know it, you are drinking the very wine of life; and when the sweet juices of the earth mount the limbs, and flow down the tender stem, ripening and reddening the pendent fruit, you feel that you somehow stand at the source of things, and have no unimportant share in the processes of Nature.  Enter at this moment boy the destroyer, whose office is that of preserver as well; for, though he removes the fruit from your sight, it remains in your memory immortally ripe and desirable.  The gardener needs all these consolations of a high philosophy.

EIGHTEENTH WEEK

Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret.  Everything might have turned out so differently!  If Ravaillac had not been imprisoned for debt, he would not have stabbed Henry of Navarre.  If William of Orange had escaped assassination by Philip’s emissaries; if France had followed the French Calvin, and embraced Protestant Calvinism, as it came very near doing towards the end of the sixteenth century; if the Continental ammunition had not given out at Bunker’s Hill; if Blucher had not “come up” at Waterloo,—­the lesson is, that things do not come up unless they are planted.  When you go behind the historical scenery, you find there is a rope and pulley to effect every transformation which has astonished you.  It was the rascality of a minister and a contractor five years before that lost the battle; and the cause of the defeat was worthless ammunition.  I should like to know how many wars have been caused by fits of indigestion, and how many more dynasties have been upset by the love of woman than by the hate of man.  It is only because we are ill informed that anything surprises us; and we are disappointed because we expect that for which we have not provided.