day; to move this and that into the sun and out of the sun pretty
constantly: but she does all the work. We never relinquish that theory.

I have been digging my potatoes, if anybody cares to know it. I planted
them in what are called "Early Rose,"--the rows a little less than three
feet apart; but the vines came to an early close in the drought. Digging
potatoes is a pleasant, soothing occupation, but not poetical. It is
good for the mind, unless they are too small (as many of mine are), when
it begets a want of gratitude to the bountiful earth. What small
potatoes we all are, compared with what we might be! We don't plow deep
enough, any of us, for one thing. I shall put in the plow next year, and
give the tubers room enough. I think they felt the lack of it this year:
many of them seemed ashamed to come out so small. There is great
pleasure in turning out the brown-jacketed fellows into the sunshine of a
royal September day, and seeing them glisten as they lie thickly strewn
on the warm soil. Life has few such moments. But then they must be
picked up. The picking-up, in this world, is always the unpleasant part
of it.

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 u