In all the wide range of accepted British maxims there is none, take it for all in all, more thoroughly abominable than the one as to the sowing of wild oats. Look at it on what side you will, and you can make nothing but a devil’s maxim of it. What a man—be he young, old, or middle-aged—sows, that, and nothing else shall he reap. The one only thing to do with wild oats is to put them carefully into the hottest part of the[80] fire, and get them burnt to dust, every seed of them. If you sow them, no matter in what ground, up they will come, with long, tough roots like couch-grass, and luxuriant stalks and leaves as sure as there is a sun in heaven—a crop which it makes one’s heart cold to think of. The devil, too, whose special crop they are, will see that they thrive, and............