THE COUNTRY HOME [CHAPTER 
is less than $8.00 per acre. Market gardening is, 
therefore, one of the most profitable means of earn- 
ing a living from the land. However, I am writ- 
ing more specifically for those who are desirous of 
surrounding themselves with home luxuries. A 
good garden for this class is absolutely a necessity. 
It will furnish half the food used, while the orchard 
and fruit garden will go far toward furnishing the 
other half. City dwellers can hardly comprehend 
the assertion that our best country vegetables, 
fresh from the ground, constitute the most delicious 
food ever placed on the table. 
Most of the romance of old-time homes in the 
country was associated with the vegetable and herb 
garden. Lucky beans are still seen on watch 
charms, and potatoes are carried in pockets to cure 
rheumatism. They possibly do it quite as well as 
drugs in the stomach. In leap-year it is said that 
all the peas and beans grow the wrong way in the 
pod — it being women’s year, and “‘ Women do con- 
trarious.” To sleep in a bean field was thought to 
induce insanity. Bean soup removed freckles. 
The Romans thought parsley good to stifle fumes 
of wine. I remember an old woman who argued 
that a beet flowering the first year from seed im- 
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