pole. And the vine started for the pole, and began
to climb it with determination. Here was as distinct an act of choice,
of reason, as a boy exercises when he goes into a forest, and, looking
about, decides which tree he will climb. And, besides, how did the vine
know enough to travel in exactly the right direction, three feet, to
find what it wanted? This is intellect. The weeds, on the other hand,
have hateful moral qualities. To cut down a weed is, therefore, to do
a moral action. I feel as if I were destroying sin. My hoe becomes an
instrument of retributive justice. I am an apostle of Nature. This view
of the matter lends a dignity to the art of hoeing which nothing else
does, and lifts it into the region of ethics. Hoeing becomes, not a
pastime, but a duty. And you get to regard it so, as the days and the
weeds lengthen.

Observation.--Nevertheless, what a man needs in gardening is a
cast-iron back,--with a hinge in it. The hoe is an ingenious instrument,
calculated to call out a great deal of strength at a great disadvantage.

The striped bug has come, the saddest of the year. He is a moral
double-ender, iron-clad at that. He is unpleasant in two ways. He
burrows in the ground so that you cannot find him, and he flies away
so that you cannot catch him. He is rather handsome, as bugs go, but
utterly dastardly, in that he gnaws the stem of the plant close to the
ground, and ruins it without any apparent advantage to himself. I find
him on the hills of cucumbers (perhaps it will be a cholera-year, and
we shall not want any), the squashes (small loss), and the melons (which
never ripen). The best way to deal with the striped bug is to sit down
by the hills, and patiently watch for him. If you are spry, you can
annoy him. This, however, takes time. It takes all day and part of the
night. For he flieth in darkness, and wasteth at noonday. If you get
up before the dew is off the plants,--it goes off very early,--you can
sprinkle soot on the plant (soot is my panacea: if I can get the disease
of a plant reduced to the necessity of soot, I am all right) and soot
is unpleasant to the bug. But the best thing to do is to set a toad to
catch the bugs. The toad at once establishes the most intimate relations
with the bug. It is a pleasure to see such unity among the lower
animals. The difficulty is to make the toad stay and watch the hill.
If you know your toad, it is all right. If you do not, you must build
a tight fence r