so many _ifs_ about it that you may be disappointed
after all. Perhaps the bugs will destroy half your vines."

"I can kill the bugs," said Nat.

"Perhaps dry weather will wither them all up."

"I can water them every day if they need it."

"That is certainly having good courage, Nat," added his father, "but if
you conquer the bugs, and get around the dry weather, it may be too wet
and blast your vines, or there may be such a hail storm as I have known
several times in my life, and cut them to pieces."

"I don't think there will be such a hail storm this year; there never
was one like it since I can remember."

"I hope there won't be," replied his father. "It is well to look on the
bright side, and hope for the best for it keeps the courage up. It is
also well to look out for disappointment. I know a gentleman who thought
he would raise some ducks. So he obtained a dozen eggs, and put them
under a hen, and then he hired a man, to make a small artificial pond in
his garden, which he could fill from his well, for the young ducks to
swim in. The time came for the ducks to appear, but not one of the eggs
hatched, and it caused much merriment among the neighbors, and the man
has never heard the last of _counting ducks before they are hatched_. I
have heard people in the streets and stores say, when some one was
undertaking a doubtful enterprise, 'he is counting ducks.' Now,
possibly, your squashes may turn out like the gentleman's ducks, though
I do not really think it will be so. I speak of it that you may think of
these things."

A sly sort of smile played over Nat's expressive countenance at this
mention of the ducks, but it did not shake his confidence in the art of
raising squashes. He had become a thorough believer in squashes,--they
were now a part of his creed. He could see them on the vines before the
seeds were planted. Some of them were very large,--as big as a
water-pail, and his glowing imagination set him to work already, rolling
them into a wheelbarrow. He cared little for the bugs, though they
should come in a great army, he could conquer them, infantry, artillery,
and all.

This scene was enacted about thirty-five years ago, not a thousand miles
from Boston, when Nat was about ten years old, a bright, active,
energetic, efficient, hopeful little fellow. His father gave him the use
of a piece of ground for raising squashes, and the boy was to have the
proceeds of the crop with which to line his new p