it for us. However badly we may do it,
patriotism demands that we monkey around with a garden of our own. We
may get bitten by a snapping bean or routed by a rutabaga or infected by
a parsnip. But with Bill and those fellows at our heels we have just got
to face it. Hellebore!

What we want to know is, How do you ever find out all these things about
vegetables? We bought an ounce of tomato seeds in desperation, and now
Fred says "one ounce of tomato seeds will produce 3,000 plants. You
should have bought two dozen plants instead of the seed." How does he
know those things? Hank says beans are very delicate and must not be
handled while they are wet or they may get rusty. Again we ask, how does
he know? Where do they learn these matters? Bill says that stones draw
out the moisture from the soil and every stone in the garden should be
removed by hand before we plant. We offered him twenty cents an hour to
do it.

The most tragic odor in the world hangs over Marathon these days; the
smell of freshly spaded earth. It is extolled by the poets and all
those happy sons of the pavement who know nothing about it. But here are
we, who hardly know a loam from a lentil, breaking our back over seed
catalogues. Public opinion may compel us to raise vegetables, but we are
going to go about it our own way. If the stones are going to act like
werewolves and suck the moisture from our soil, let them do so. We don't
believe in thwarting nature. Maybe it will be a very wet summer and we
shall have the laugh on Bill, who has carted away all his stones.

And we should just like to see Bill Stites write a poem. We bet it
wouldn't look as much like a poem as our beans look like beans. And as
for Hank and Fred, they wouldn't even know how to begin to plant a poem!

BULLIED BY THE BIRDS

Marathon, Pa., May 2.

I insist that the place for birds is in the air or on the bushy tops of
trees or on smooth-shaven lawns. Let them twitter and strut on the
greens of golf courses and intimidate the tired business men. Let them
peck cinders along the railroad track and keep the trains waiting. But
really they have no right to take possession of a man's house as they
have mine.

The nesting season is a time of tyranny and oppression for those who
live in Marathon. The birds are upon us like Hindenburg in Belgium. We
go about on tiptoe, speaking in whispers, for fear of annoying them. It
is all the fault of the Marathon Bird Club, which has o