eve that when the wages of mechanics are
raised to eight and ten dollars a day, the workmen will not come at all:
they will merely send their cards.

I do not see any possible fault in the above figures. I ought to say
that I deferred putting a value on the potatoes until I had footed up
the debit column. This is always the safest way to do. I had twenty-five
bushels. I roughly estimated that there are one hundred good ones to the
bushel. Making my own market price, I asked two cents apiece for them.
This I should have considered dirt cheap last June, when I was going
down the rows with the hoe. If any one thinks that two cents each is
high, let him try to raise them.

Nature is "awful smart." I intend to be complimentary in saying so. She
shows it in little things. I have mentioned my attempt to put in a few
modest turnips, near the close of the season. I sowed the seeds, by the
way, in the most liberal manner. Into three or four short rows I presume
I put enough to sow an acre; and they all came up,--came up as thick as
grass, as crowded and useless as babies in a Chinese village. Of course,
they had to be thinned out; that is, pretty much all pulled up; and
it took me a long time; for it takes a conscientious man some time to
decide which are the best and healthiest plants to spare. After all, I
spared too many. That is the great danger everywhere in this world (it
may not be in the next): things are too thick; we lose all in grasping
for too much. The Scotch say, that no man ought to thin out his own
turnips, because he will not sacrifice enough to leave room for the
remainder to grow: he should get his neighbor, who does not care for the
plants, to do it. But this is mere talk, and aside from the point: if
there is anything I desire to avoid in these agricultural papers, it
is digression. I did think that putting in these turnips so late in the
season, when general activity has ceased, and in a remote part of the
garden, they would pass unnoticed. But Nature never even winks, as I can
see. The tender blades were scarcely out of the ground when she sent a
small black fly, which seemed to have been born and held in reserve for
this purpose,--to cut the leaves. They speedily made lace-work of the
whole bed. Thus everything appears to have its special enemy,--except,
perhaps, p----y: nothing ever troubles that.

Did the Concord Grape ever come to more luscious perfection than this
year? or yield so abundantly? The go