e only
danger is, that you may rather make an idol of the hoe, and somewhat
neglect your garden in explaining it and fooling about with it. I almost
think that, with one of these in the hands of an ordinary day-laborer,
you might see at night where he had been working.

Let us have peas. I have been a zealous advocate of the birds. I have
rejoiced in their multiplication. I have endured their concerts at four
o'clock in the morning without a murmur. Let them come, I said, and eat
the worms, in order that we, later, may enjoy the foliage and the fruits
of the earth. We have a cat, a magnificent animal, of the sex which
votes (but not a pole-cat)--so large and powerful that if he were in the
army he would be called Long Tom. He is a cat of fine disposition, the
most irreproachable morals I ever saw thrown away in a cat, and a
splendid hunter. He spends his nights, not in social dissipation, but in
gathering in rats, mice, flying-squirrels, and also birds. When he first
brought me a bird, I told him that it was wrong, and tried to convince
him, while he was eating it, that he was doing wrong; for he is a
reasonable cat, and understands pretty much everything except the
binomial theorem and the time down the cycloidal arc. But with no
effect. The killing of birds went on to my great regret and shame.

The other day I went to my garden to get a mess of peas. I had seen the
day before that they were just ready to pick. How I had lined the
ground, planted, hoed, bushed them! The bushes were very fine--seven
feet high, and of good wood. How I had delighted in the growing, the
blowing, the podding! What a touching thought it was that they had all
podded for me! When I went to pick them I found the pods all split open
and the peas gone. The dear little birds, who are so fond of the
strawberries, had eaten them all. Perhaps there were left as many as I
planted; I did not count them. I made a rapid estimate of the cost of
the seed, the interest of the ground, the price of labor, the value of
the bushes, the anxiety of weeks of watchfulness. I looked about me on
the face of nature. The wind blew from the south so soft and
treacherous! A thrush sang in the woods so deceitfully! All nature
seemed fair. But who was to give me back my peas? The fowls of the air
have peas; but what has man?

I went into the house. I called Calvin (that is the name of our cat,
given him on account of his gravity, morality, and uprightness. We never
fam