My Boyhood and Touth 



ful crops were raised. This caused a complete 

 change in farming methods; the farmers raised 

 fertilizing clover, planted com, and fed the 

 crop to cattle and hogs. 



But no crop raised in our wilderness was so 

 surprisingly rich and sweet and purely generous 

 to us boys and, indeed, to everybody as the 

 watermelons and muskmelons. We planted a 

 large patch on a sunny hill-slope the very first 

 spring, and it seemed miraculous that a few 

 handfuls of little flat seeds should in a few 

 months send up a hundred wagon-loads of 

 crisp, sumptuous, red-hearted and yellow- 

 hearted fruits covering all the hill. We soon 

 learned to know when they were in their prime, 

 and when over-ripe and mealy. Also that if a 

 second crop was taken from the same ground 

 without fertilizing it, the melons would be 

 small and what we called soapy; that is, soft 

 and smooth, utterly uncrisp, and without a 

 trace of the lively freshness and sweetness of 

 those raised on virgin soil. Coming in from 

 the farm work at noon, the half-dozen or so of 

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