mself
that, when he gets it once planted, he will have a season of rest and
of enjoyment in the sprouting and growing of his seeds. It is a green
anticipation. He has planted a seed that will keep him awake nights;
drive rest from his bones, and sleep from his pillow. Hardly is the
garden planted, when he must begin to hoe it. The weeds have sprung up
all over it in a night. They shine and wave in redundant life. The docks
have almost gone to seed; and their roots go deeper than conscience.
Talk about the London Docks!--the roots of these are like the sources of
the Aryan race. And the weeds are not all. I awake in the morning (and
a thriving garden will wake a person up two hours before he ought to
be out of bed) and think of the tomato-plants,--the leaves like fine
lace-work, owing to black bugs that skip around, and can't be caught.
Somebody ought to get up before the dew is off (why don't the dew stay
on till after a reasonable breakfast?) and sprinkle soot on the leaves.
I wonder if it is I. Soot is so much blacker than the bugs, that they
are disgusted, and go away. You can't get up too early, if you have a
garden. You must be early due yourself, if you get ahead of the bugs.
I think, that, on the whole, it would be best to sit up all night,
and sleep daytimes. Things appear to go on in the night in the garden
uncommonly. It would be less trouble to stay up than it is to get up so
early.

I have been setting out some new raspberries, two sorts,--a silver and
a gold color. How fine they will look on the table next year in a
cut-glass dish, the cream being in a ditto pitcher! I set them four
and five feet apart. I set my strawberries pretty well apart also. The
reason is, to give room for the cows to run through when they break into
the garden,--as they do sometimes. A cow needs a broader track than a
locomotive; and she generally makes one. I am sometimes astonished,
to see how big a space in, a flower-bed her foot will cover. The
raspberries are called Doolittle and Golden Cap. I don't like the name
of the first variety, and, if they do much, shall change it to Silver
Top. You never can tell what a thing named Doolittle will do. The one
in the Senate changed color, and got sour. They ripen badly,--either
mildew, or rot on the bush. They are apt to Johnsonize,--rot on the
stem. I shall watch the Doolittles.

THIRD WEEK

I believe that I have found, if not original sin, at least vegetable
total depravity i