Innocent Enemies by Adelaide D. Wellman

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 19, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 32.

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Innocent Enemies

By Adelaide D. Wellman

"CHILDREN, take every one of those weeds to the kitchen and put them into the stove. Be sure that not one escapes."

"Weeds! Why do you call them weeds, papa? They are flowers, and they are pretty!"

"You would not think them pretty if you had seen the harm they can do."

"What harm can they do, papa? They are not poisonous, are they?"

"No, they are not poisonous; but—"

"And they have no thorns."

"True; yet they are very objectionable, because they simply take the land."

Mr. West had never seemed to grudge ground for any play-gardening that his children wished to do; hence they were reasonably surprised that he should object to giving space for the showy plants they had brought from a remote nook they had found when on a jaunt that day.

"They wouldn't take much room," urged one of the girls.

"Ah, you don't understand! In a few years they would take the whole farm, if they were allowed to grow."

Then the father explained that those magenta blossoms stood for many ruined acres in that genial climate, whither they had been brought as ornamental plants. In the colder country from which they came, they had been inoffensive annuals; but the milder clime had permitted them to live through the winter, and multiply with disastrous rapidity.

What the old-time garden digitalis, or foxglove, is to Oregon, and what the carefully nurtured lantana of Eastern hothouses is to certain tropic regions, such are divers habits to the lives in which they take root.

Said an intellectual young woman: "The reading of these books does not harm me, because I read them in a critical spirit, for the very purpose of discriminating between their sound features and their unsound. Certainly impressionable young people ought not to read any of them except such as are recommended by persons of discernment. But in my position, it is desirable that one be informed regarding the current literature." Sequel: Those objectionable books "took the land"—took invaluable time and invaluable mental vigor from a young life that would have yielded far better if not thus sapped.

"Ho, ho! This is harmless diversion!" declared a young man, when an acquaintance expressed scruples about joining in a pastime. And it was harmless, in the sense that it did not tend directly to the gambling-table or the race-track; but to say no more for a diversion than that it is harmless, is to "damn with faint praise." What "takes the land" is a pest, unless it returns commensurate value.

"I do not wear my clothes tight!" insists almost every individual whose feet, body, throat, or hands, are unduly restricted. These persons refuse to recognize the fact that their members not only should not be compressed, but should have room to expand. Likewise minds and morals need more than protection from aggressive injury; they need every aid to development.

Beware of "harmless" diversions, which dissipate mental vigor or spiritual life. Beware of social customs that restrict development.

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