morning
glory and the moon flower and dreamed at night that my home looked like
a florist's advertisement, but when leafy June came a bunch of Norway
oats and a hill of corn were trying to climb the strings nailed up for
the use of my non-resident vines. I have planted with song and laughter
the seeds of the ostensible pansy and carnation, only in tears to reap
the bachelor's button and the glistening foliage of the sorghum plant.
I have planted in faith and a deep, warm soil, with pleasing hope in my
heart and a dark-red picture on the outside of the package, only to
harvest the low, vulgar jimson weed and the night-blooming bull thistle.

Does the mean temperature or the average rainfall have anything to do
with it? If statistics are working these changes they ought to be
stopped. For my own part, however, I am led to believe that our seedsmen
put so much money into their catalogues that they do not have anything
left to use in the purchase of seeds. Good religion and very fair
cookies may be produced without the aid of caraway seed, but you cannot
gather nice, fresh train figs of thistles or expect much of a seedsman
whose plants make no effort whatever to resemble their pictures.

Hoping that you will examine into this matter, and that the club will
always hereafter look carefully in this column for its farm information,
I remain, in a sitting posture, yours truly.

BILL NYE.

[Illustration: "YOU IN THE HAMMOCK; AND I, NEAR BY."]

In the Afternoon

You in the hammock; and I, near by,
Was trying to read, and to swing you, too;
And the green of the sward was so kind to the eye,
And the shade of the maples so cool and blue,
That often I looked from the book to you
To say as much, with a sigh.

You in the hammock. The book we'd brought
From the parlor--to read in the open air,--
Something of love and of Launcelot
And Guinevere, I believe, was there--
But the afternoon, it was far more fair
Than the poem was, I thought.

You in the hammock; and on and on
I droned and droned through the rhythmic stuff--
But with always a half of my vision gone
Over the top of the page--enough
To caressingly gaze at you, swathed in the fluff
Of your hair and your odorous lawn.

You in the hammock--And that was a year--
Fully a year ago, I guess!--
And what do we care for their Guinevere