The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1893-09-06
I and MY Comrade.
Auo,.sta Chronicle.

I am not advertising anybody S yeast
cakes, nor anybody's garden seed
either, for that matter, but l am led
to say that if there is any product OF
the garden that deserves to be called
q fruit, it is the Acme tomato, You
may try all the tomatoes and you will
not find one other that has its fruity
flavor, It is a flavor peculiarly its
own; and I believe I could any day
make hearty breakfast or dinner on
Acme tomatoes alone, with only the
accessory of little salt to open my
receptive faculties to full perception
of their luciousness. What leads me
to make these remarks is talk | had
with my comrade on our last tramp:
Said he: Gone of the most wonderful
things in the world to think Of is that
all these fine fruits and vegetables of
ours are lineal descendants Of mostly
little, hard, sour, bitter fruits and
vegetables. For ten thousand, or
twenty thousand, or maybe hundreds
of thousands of years, man has been
cultivating some Of them; selecting,
for replanting, the seeds Of those that
pleased him best; so that now the
fruits and vegetables we have are so
superior to, and are so different from
their wild ancestors, that in many
cases, if not in most cases, we are
unable to identify them. In many
cases the original stocks seem to have
passed out Of the world and become
extinct. Take the bananna-the best
fruit in the world to my taste-it is
cultivated throughout the tropical
world, yet nowhere is it known to be
indigenous; it has even ceased to bear
seed, as it must have done anciently,
when wild. said man has been cul-
tivating some of them for years !;
doubtless I ought to have said most OF
them. But there are some which man
has begun to cultivate only within
very recent times. A notable exam
pie is the tomato. Why, people not
yet old remember when the tomato
was a depised weed, that came up in
the gardens of itself, like the poke
weed or the Jamestown weed. Its
fruit was unfit to eat, and by many
was believed to be poisonous. But
some man was q crank; he believed in
things that he could not seee; he was
a visionary; he had faith he believed
the defpised weed had virtue and a
sweet SAVIOR hid in it; he began to
cultivate it; he selected the best for
seed in time people began to like it;
it found place in the gardens, not as
Of old by stealth but by favor; then
the skillful seed growers took it up
and gave us all the varieties we have
to-day, at the head Of which stands
the Acme. The big, Aeshy tomato Of
to-day is as much superior to the
little, sour. bullet-sized tomato Of two
generations ago, all seeds and no flesh,
as the gillyfower, or the king, or the
winesap is to the wild crabapple. The
peach, the pear, the plum, the orange,
the melons, all these are in the same
way the products Of mans cultivation.
Said he: "When | consider how
man has created these, [ perceive his
divinity; his kindship to the Creator !;
he becomes creator himself
'sNot CREATOR" I replied, merely
developer the material existed be-
fore-he only changed it,
'sHe made it, insisted my comrade,
"the Acme tomato did not exist fifty
years ago; man created it.
"But man." I said, created it out
Of what already existed-the Creator
made things out Of nothing"
"How do you know?'' he asked
sharply.
I said: "He must have made every
thing out Of nothing, or else matter
has existed from all eternity, and that
is what you cannot believe"
stBut it is exactly what I do be-
lieve," he replied.
I saw that we were struggling upon
the ragged edge Of metaphysics, and
as we had got to the creek, / changed
the subject. ''Let's take SWIM" |
said.
1t was race which would strip first.
He was quicker than |, and as he
came up from his first dive he blew a
lot Of creek water out Of his mouth
and sputtered '"That is exactly what
I do believe" f"
Then made plunge and in order
to get him away from the creation and
the beginning Of things, I caught him
by the heel and pulled him under. In
the tussle that followed I soon got to
thinking more of the end Of the world
than of the beginning of it, and I was
very glad when he let me 60. We
came up together, he right in front Of
me, and as he wiped the water from
his face he said again "That is
exactly what I do believe.
he may be right do not know.
We are presented>with the two horns
of a dilemma; one, that everything
has been made out of nothing; the
other, that matter has existed from all
eternity, uncreated; and [ suppose it
depends almost altogether upon how
we are constructed, and upon how we
have been brought up, which we be-
lieve.
But what if matter is itself divine
"a visible, audible, tangible NANTES
tation of Diety? But that is panthe-
ism, and pantheism is not popular.
So the doubt remains.
''There is one sight I should like to
see" said my comrade, as we were
walking back.
"What is that 2" l asked.
''I should like to see long table
filled with all the fruits and vcgeta-
bles of the world. We can think and
think of what would be upon it; We
will call to mind all the fruits and
vegetables of our own country that we
can, and we will think then Of but a
small portion of them; we know a
good many foreign fruits, but it is but
very snlall per cent that we know !;
yet of the fruits and vegetables which
we can call to mind, how long table
we would fill Think then of the
thousands of others which we cannot
call to mind-of the thousands we do
not know-of the exceeding many We
never heard of, what table they