8O LIBERTY AND A LIVING. 



some purpose which I could never fathom, half 

 of my garden plot was planted with cucumbers 

 of a particularly hard and leathery type. They 

 throve in the most wonderful fashion, and there 

 were bushels of them, of no earthly use to any 

 one ; we could not eat them or give them away. 

 They rotted where they grew, and seemed to 

 serve no purpose except perhaps to enable my 

 assistant to point to something in the garden 

 which looked like a successful vegetable. To 

 be brief over a somewhat painful experiment, 

 and estimating the garden stuff that we really 

 got out of my little plot, I should say that de- 

 livered at our door the stuff would have cost 

 us not more than $15, or about half its 

 actual cost. I do not take into account 

 the value of my work in hoeing up tons of 

 weeds and pouring down tons of water, betause 

 the practical knowledge I gathered more than 

 offsets these tremendous labors. 



In the meantime I had profited by studying 

 neighboring gardens, notably a very beautiful 

 one belonging to a neighbor who did all the 

 work himself and produced a crop of vegetables 

 which seemed to me nothing less than miracu- 

 lous. Every inch in this neighbor's garden 



