V.] SEEPING COWS. 83 



them away. I once saw not less than three rods of 

 ground, in a garden of this sort, with lettuces all bear- 

 ing seed. Seed enough for half a county. They cut 

 a cabbage here and a cabbage there, and so let the 

 whole of the piece of ground remain undug, till the 

 last cabbage be cut. But, after all, the produce, even 

 in this way, is so great, that it never could be gotten 

 rid of, if the main part were not thrown away. The 

 rubbish heap always receives four-fifths even of the 

 eatable part of the produce. 



138. It is not thus that the market gardeners pro- 

 ceed. Their rubbish heap consists of little besides 

 mere cabbage stumps. No sooner is one crop on the 

 ground than they settle in their minds what is to fol- 

 low it. They clear as they go in taking off a crop, 

 and, as they clear they dig and plant. The ground is 

 never without seed in it or plants on it. And thus, in 

 the course of the year, they raise a prodigious bulk of 

 vegetables from eighty rods of ground. Such vigi- 

 lance and industry are not to be expected in a servant; 

 for it is foolish to expect that a man will exert him- 

 self for another as much as he will for himself. But if 

 I was situated as one of the persons is that I have spo- 

 ken of in Paragraph 137 ; that is to say, if I had a gar- 

 den of eighty rods, or even of sixty rods of ground, I 

 would out of that garden, draw a sufficiency of vege- 

 tables for my family, and would make it yield enough 

 for a cow besides. I should go a short way to work 

 with my gardener. I should put Cottage Economy 

 into his hands, and tell him, that if he could furnisn 

 me with vegetables, and my cow with food, he was 

 my man ; and that if he could not, I must get one that 

 could and would. I am not for making a man toil like 

 a slave ; but what would become of the world, if a 

 well-fed healthy man could exhaust himself in tilling 

 and cropping and clearing half an acre of ground? I 

 have known many men dig thirty rods of garden 

 ground in a day ; I have, before I was fourteen, digged 

 twenty rods in a day, for more than ten days succes- 

 sively ; and I have heard, and believe the fact, of a 

 man at Portsea, who digged forty rods in one single 



