Category: thomas-h-huxley
Quotes of Category: thomas-h-huxley
  1. John Dos Passos _ The 42nd Parallel

    was born in a brick farmhouse in Lancaster Mass,he walked through the woods one wintercrunching through the shinycrusted snowstumbling into a little dell where a warm spring wasand found the grass green and weeds sproutingand skunk cabbage pushing up a potent thumb,He went home and sat by the stove and read Struggle for Existence Origin of Species NaturalSelection that wasn't what they taught in church,so ceased to believe moved to Lunenburg,found a seedball in a potato plantsowed the seed and cashed in on 's Natural Selectionon and with the Burbank potato.Young man go west; went to Santa Rosafull of his dream of green grass in winter ever-blooming flowers ever-bearing berries; could cash in on Natural Selection carried his apocalyptic dream of green grass in winterand seedless berries and stoneless plums and thornless roses brambles cactus-winters were bleak in that bleakbrick farmhouse in bleak Massachusetts-out to sunny Santa Rosa;and he was a sunny old manwhere roses bloomed all yeareverblooming everbearinghybrids.America was hybridAmerica could cash in on Natural Selection.He was an infidel he believed in and NaturalSelection and the influence of the mighty deadand a good firm shipper's fruitsuitable for canning.He was one of the grand old men until the churchesand the congregationsgot wind that he was an infidel and believedin . had never a thought of evil,selected improved hybrids for Americathose sunny years in Santa Rosa.But he brushed down a wasp's nest that time;he wouldn't give up and Natural Selectionand they stung him and he diedpuzzled.They buried him under a cedartree.His favorite photographwas of a little totstanding beside a bed of hybrideverblooming double Shasta daisieswith never a thought of evilAnd Mount Shastain the background, used to be a volcanobut they don't have volcanosany more.
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