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Show 20 the soil, it was time to rip open her bowels, and heat up the forge. How could he justify his seemingly impractical wanderings to people he met along the way, people who believed that men must work, people who often did him personal kindness? A blacksmith, for instance, welcomed Muir to share his bread, because the young man offered to pay. In his journal, Muir simply dismissed the man's "musty orthodox arguments," but he later wrote a note to himself that the story would have to be told in full. And later he reconstructed their discussion. "Hammer in hand, bare-breasted, sweaty, begrimed, and covered with shaggy black hair," this blacksmith of Tennessee could not understand how any "strong-minded man" could be wandering around aimlessly, just because he loved plants and wanted to "get acquainted with as many of them as possible." When Muir attempted to repeat this man's arguments, he was also recreating a dialogue within himself. A threatening figure had asked, was Muir a man? The blacksmith was a materialist, and argued like a character invented by Hawthorne: "These are hard times, and real work is required of every man that is able. Picking up blossoms doesn't seem to be a man's work at all in any kind of times." Muir responded, or so he reported, with the example of Solomon the wise botanist, and with the words of Christ. "Consider the lillies and how they grow," said Christ. Jeanne Carr was fond of this aphorism. And so Muir claimed mighty scriptural authority |