ything of it in them. They can afford to wait.
Two of them will sometimes wait nearly half a day while a comrade goes
for a tool. They are patient and philosophical. It is a great pleasure
to meet such men. One only wishes there was some work he could do for
them by the hour. There ought to be reciprocity. I think they have very
nearly solved the problem of Life: it is to work for other people, never
for yourself, and get your pay by the hour. You then have no anxiety,
and little work. If you do things by the job, you are perpetually
driven: the hours are scourges. If you work by the hour, you gently sail
on the stream of Time, which is always bearing you on to the haven of
Pay, whether you make any effort, or not. Working by the hour tends to
make one moral. A plumber working by the job, trying to unscrew a rusty,
refractory nut, in a cramped position, where the tongs continually
slipped off, would swear; but I never heard one of them swear, or
exhibit the least impatience at such a vexation, working by the hour.
Nothing can move a man who is paid by the hour. How sweet the flight of
time seems to his calm mind!

TWELFTH WEEK

Mr. Horace Greeley, the introduction of whose name confers an honor upon
this page (although I ought to say that it is used entirely without his
consent), is my sole authority in agriculture. In politics I do not dare
to follow him; but in agriculture he is irresistible. When, therefore,
I find him advising Western farmers not to hill up their corn, I think
that his advice must be political. You must hill up your corn. People
always have hilled up their corn. It would take a constitutional
amendment to change the practice, that has pertained ever since maize
was raised. "It will stand the drought better," says Mr. Greeley, "if
the ground is left level." I have corn in my garden, ten and twelve feet
high, strong and lusty, standing the drought like a grenadier; and it
is hilled. In advising this radical change, Mr. Greeley evidently has
a political purpose. He might just as well say that you should not hill
beans, when everybody knows that a "hill of beans" is one of the most
expressive symbols of disparagement. When I become too lazy to hill my
corn, I, too, shall go into politics.

I am satisfied that it is useless to try to cultivate "pusley." I set a
little of it one side, and gave it some extra care. It did not thrive
as well as that which I was fighting. The fact is, there is a spiri