in eats the birds. We eat--no, we
do not eat Calvin. There the chain stops. When you ascend the scale of
being, and come to an animal that is, like ourselves, inedible, you
have arrived at a result where you can rest. Let us respect the cat. He
completes an edible chain.

I have little heart to discuss methods of raising peas. It occurs to
me that I can have an iron peabush, a sort of trellis, through which
I could discharge electricity 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
Ec