But, jubilate, I have got my garden all hoed the first time!  I feel as if I had put down the rebellion.  Only there are guerrillas left here and there, about the borders and in corners, unsubdued,—­Forrest docks, and Quantrell grass, and Beauregard pig-weeds.  This first hoeing is a gigantic task:  it is your first trial of strength with the never-sleeping forces of Nature.  Several times, in its progress, I was tempted to do as Adam did, who abandoned his garden on account of the weeds. (How much my mind seems to run upon Adam, as if there had been only two really moral gardens,—­Adam’s and mine!) The only drawback to my rejoicing over the finishing of the first hoeing is, that the garden now wants hoeing the second time.  I suppose, if my garden were planted in a perfect circle, and I started round it with a hoe, I should never see an opportunity to rest.  The fact is, that gardening is the old fable of perpetual labor; and I, for one, can never forgive Adam Sisyphus, or whoever it was, who let in the roots of discord.  I had pictured myself sitting at eve, with my family, in the shade of twilight, contemplating a garden hoed.  Alas! it is a dream not to be realized in this world.

My mind has been turned to the subject of fruit and shade trees in a garden.  There are those who say that trees shade the garden too much, and interfere with the growth of the vegetables.  There may be something in this:  but when I go down the potato rows, the rays of the sun glancing upon my shining blade, the sweat pouring from my face, I should be grateful for shade.  What is a garden for?  The pleasure of man.  I should take much more pleasure in a shady garden.  Am I to be sacrificed, broiled, roasted, for the sake of the increased vigor of a few vegetables?  The thing is perfectly absurd.  If I were rich, I think I would have my garden covered with an awning, so that it would be comfortable to work in it.  It might roll up and be removable, as the great awning of the Roman Coliseum was, —­not like the Boston one, which went off in a high wind.  Another very good way to do, and probably not so expensive as the awning, would be to have four persons of foreign birth carry a sort of canopy over you as you hoed.  And there might be a person at each end of the row with some cool and refreshing drink.  Agriculture is still in a very barbarous stage.  I hope to live yet to see the day when I can do my gardening, as tragedy is done, to slow and soothing music, and attended by some of the comforts I have named.  These things come so forcibly into my mind sometimes as I work, that perhaps, when a wandering breeze lifts my straw hat, or a bird lights on a near currant-bush, and shakes out a full-throated summer song, I almost expect to find the cooling drink and the hospitable entertainment at the end of the row.  But I never do.  There is nothing to be done but to turn round, and hoe back to the other end.