52 LIBERTY AND A LIVING. 



this gymnastic exercise in the sunlight I have 

 been cheating the world out of a living. 



But I cannot advise any one who does not 

 love hard physical exercise to attempt any such 

 experiment. It requires good muscles and 

 system, the latter especially, as I shall have 

 occasion to insist upon more than once in 

 chapters upon my garden, my bees, and my 

 chickens. Without system there is as rapid a 

 deterioration in a garden as in a business enter- 

 prise. Experience has taught me that one 

 hour's writing every day, or an hour's garden- 

 ing, accomplished with clock-like regularity, 

 gives valuable results, where spasmodic work 

 ends in comparatively nothing. The same 

 rules which obtain in business life hold good in 

 my country work. The notion that a whole 

 day's work in the garden once a week is as 

 good as two hours' every morning, is all 

 wrong. I should say that two hours' work in 

 the garden once a day, from the middle of 

 April to the end of August, would result in 

 twice the garden produce that might be ex- 

 pected from the same number of hours' work 

 given at odd moments a day here and a day 

 there. And so with every other country pur- 



