ricity at frequent intervals, and electrify
the birds to death when they alight: for they stand upon my beautiful
brush in order to pick out the peas. An apparatus of this kind, with
an operator, would cost, however, about as much as the peas. A
neighbor suggests that I might put up a scarecrow near the vines,
which would keep the birds away. I am doubtful about it: the birds
are too much accustomed to seeing a person in poor clothes in the
garden to care much for that. Another neighbor suggests that the
birds do not open the pods; that a sort of blast, apt to come after
rain, splits the pods, and the birds then eat the peas. It may be
so. There seems to be complete unity of action between the blast and
the birds. But, good neighbors, kind friends, I desire that you will
not increase, by talk, a disappointment which you cannot assuage.

SEVENTH WEEK

A garden is an awful responsibility. You never know what you may be
aiding to grow in it. I heard a sermon, not long ago, in which the
preacher said that the Christian, at the moment of his becoming one,
was as perfect a Christian as he would be if he grew to be an
archangel; that is, that he would not change thereafter at all, but
only develop. I do not know whether this is good theology, or not; and
I hesitate to support it by an illustration from my garden, especially
as I do not want to run the risk of propagating error, and I do not
care to give away these theological comparisons to clergymen who make
me so little return in the way of labor. But I find, in dissecting a
pea-blossom, that hidden in the center of it is a perfect miniature
pea-pod, with the peas all in it,--as perfect a pea-pod as it will ever
be, only it is as tiny as a chatelaine ornament. Maize and some other
things show the same precocity. This confirmation of the theologic
theory is startling, and sets me meditating upon the moral
possibilities of my garden. I may find in it yet the cosmic egg.

And, speaking of moral things, I am half determined to petition the
Ecumenical Council to issue a bull of excommunication against
"pusley." Of all the forms which "error" has taken in this world,
I think that is about the worst. In the Middle Ages the monks in St.
Bernard's ascetic community at Clairvaux excommunicated a vineyard
which a less rigid monk had planted near, so that it bore nothing.
In 1120 a bishop of Laon excommunicated the caterpillars in his
diocese; and, the following year, St. Berna