makes no impression on him, for the tomatoes are not
his. The best way is to casually remark to him that he has a fine lot of
chickens, pretty well grown, and that you like spring chickens broiled.
He will take them away at once.

The neighbors' small children are also out of place in your garden, in
strawberry and currant time. I hope I appreciate the value of children.
We should soon come to nothing without them, though the Shakers have
the best gardens in the world. Without them the common school would
languish. But the problem is, what to do with them in a garden. For they
are not good to eat, and there is a law against making away with them.
The law is not very well enforced, it is true; for people do thin them
out with constant dosing, paregoric, and soothing-syrups, and scanty
clothing. But I, for one, feel that it would not be right, aside from
the law, to take the life, even of the smallest child, for the sake of a
little fruit, more or less, in the garden. I may be wrong; but these
are my sentiments, and I am not ashamed of them. When we come, as Bryant
says in his "Iliad," to leave the circus of this life, and join that
innumerable caravan which moves, it will be some satisfaction to us,
that we have never, in the way of gardening, disposed of even the
humblest child unnecessarily. My plan would be to put them into
Sunday-schools more thoroughly, and to give the Sunday-schools an
agricultural turn; teaching the children the sacredness of neighbors'
vegetables. I think that our Sunday-schools do not sufficiently impress
upon children the danger, from snakes and otherwise, of going into the
neighbors' gardens.

SIXTH WEEK

Somebody has sent me a new sort of hoe, with the wish that I should
speak favorably of it, if I can consistently. I willingly do so, but
with the understanding that I am to be at liberty to speak just as
courteously of any other hoe which I may receive. If I understand
religious morals, this is the position of the religious press
with regard to bitters and wringing-machines. In some cases, the
responsibility of such a recommendation is shifted upon the wife of
the editor or clergy-man. Polly says she is entirely willing to make a
certificate, accompanied with an affidavit, with regard to this hoe; but
her habit of sitting about the garden walk, on an inverted flower-pot,
while I hoe, some what destroys the practical value of her testimony.

As to this hoe, I do not mind saying that