My Garden 83 



dening. The beginning was an unfortunate 

 one. The weather happened to be first very 

 wet, and then so dry and hot that my vege- 

 tables were unable to break their way through 

 the baked earth. When my peas and beans 

 still gave no signs after being in the ground 

 two weeks, I discovered that the whole 

 work would have to be done over again. A 

 Presidential campaign was beginning which 

 kept me in town often late at night, so that 

 the chief labor of the garden fell to my faithful 

 Irishman, who got far more satisfaction out of 

 it than I did. The vegetables finally did come 

 up above the surface, and many an evening I 

 finished a hard day's work by pumping and 

 carrying hundreds of gallons of water to pour 

 upon potato plants, tomato plants, bean stalks, 

 and other things which a friend of mine, an 

 expert in such matters, assured me were curi- 

 osities of malformation and backwardness. My 

 Irishman told me that it was all for want of 

 manure, and by his advice I bought six dollars' 

 worth of manure from a neighboring stable, 

 and had it spread over the ground. The bills 

 for my garden were meanwhile mounting up. 



