THE GARDEN GROWS 
(y v T is one of the blessed compensations that we can- 
cate) not recall pain once experienced, we cannot sum- 
ae "i mon the fear that once paralyzed us. All our past 
——=— is insulated by varying degrees of forgetfulness. 
Now, after eight years when I stand at the edge of my small 
world, it is difficult to recover the alternating moods of en- 
thusiasm and despair, the high hopes of each new day and the 
utter fatigue and discouragement at night—when I attacked 
that stone heap. Be it remembered, however, that I had been: 
housed most of the winter by five feet of snow on the level, 
that for months my feet had tingled to get out on the solid 
earth, and my hands, being normal hands, longed to pull and 
tug at something. Moreover, I was fired by a holy zeal; yet 
if this recital is to be wholly truthful, I must state, that, having 
gathered a crowbar, a hoe, a pickaxe, a grubbing hoe, a shovel, 
a sickle and a potato digger into a wheelbarrow, I paused 
with sinking heart when I wheeled my cargo to the stone heap. 
T felt the need of more tools! 
I had decided to recover twenty-five feet square of the 
waste, and my original idea was to dig out the bushes from 
between the rocks, remove the larger rocks, levelling off the 
others, and then have several cartloads of good rich soil 
dumped on the twenty-five foot area, and mark out my beds. 
My experience is that nothing affords such violent mental 
gymnastics as an original idea. It never works; yet one clings 
to it like a drowning man to a plank; and if you can conceive 
of the drowning man trying to nail a few more planks to his 
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