Some of these items need explanation. I have charged nothing for my
own time waiting for the potatoes to grow. My time in hoeing, fighting
weeds, etc., is put in at five days: it may have been a little more. Nor
have I put in anything for cooling drinks while hoeing. I leave this out
from principle, because I always recommend water to others. I had some
difficulty in fixing the rate of my own wages. It was the first time
I had an opportunity of paying what I thought labor was worth; and I
determined to make a good thing of it for once. I figured it right
down to European prices,--seventeen cents a day for unskilled labor. Of
course, I boarded myself. I ought to say that I fixed the wages after
the work was done, or I might have been tempted to do as some masons did
who worked for me at four dollars a day. They lay in the shade and slept
the sleep of honest toil full half the time, at least all the time I
was away. I have reason to believe 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 golden sunshine has passed into
them, and distended their purple skins almost to bursting. Such heavy
clusters! such bloom! such sweetness! such meat and drink in their
round globes! What a fine fellow Bacchus would have been, if he had only
signed the pledge when he was a young man! I have taken off clusters
that were as compact and almost as large as the Black Hamburgs. It is
slow work picking them. I do not see how the gatherers for the vintage
ever get off enough. It takes so long to disentangle the bunches from
the leaves and the interlacing vines and the supporting tendrils; and
then I like to hold up each bunch and look at it in the sunlight, and
get the fragrance and the bloom of it, and show it to Polly, who is
making herself useful, as taster and companion, at the foot of the
ladder, before dropping it into the basket. But we have other company.
The robin, the most knowing and greedy bird out of paradise (I trust
he will always be kept out), has discovered that the grape-crop is
uncommonly good, and has come back, with his whole tribe and family,
larger than it was in pea-time. He knows the ripest bunches as well as
anybody, and tries them all. If he would take a whole bunch here and
there, say half the number, and be off with it, I should not so much
care. But he will not. He pecks away at all the bunches, and spoils as
many as he can. It is time he went south.
There is no prettier sight, to my eye, than a gardener on a ladder in
his grape-arbor, in these golden days, selecting the heaviest clusters
of grapes, and handing them down to one and another of a group of
neighbors and friends, who stand under the shade of the leaves, flecked
with the sunlight, and cry, “How sweet!” “What nice ones!” and the
like,--remarks encouraging to the man on the ladder. It is great
pleasure to see people eat grapes.
Moral Truth.--I have no doubt that grapes taste best in other people's
mouths. It is an old notion that it is easier to be generous than to
be stingy. I am convinced that the majority of people would be generous
from selfish motives, if they had the opportunity.
Philosophical Observation.--Nothing shows one who his friends are like
prosperity and ripe fruit. I had a good friend in the country, whom I
almost never visited except in cherry-time. By your fruits you shall
know them.