MINE ENEMIES 
BYHERE is a certain cult that tells us with an air of 
f4| superiority that “our enemies are those with whom 
Md we have failed.’ I was inclined to question this 
—" large way of throwing the blame upon the inno- 
cent sufferer, but the garden sustains the New Philosophy; for 
surely my garden pests are but so many examples of my negli- 
gence, ignorance or tender heart. 
When I first began gardening I should have put the tender 
heart first on the list, for my early life was molded by a prig- 
gish anecdote about a boy who needlessly put his foot upon 
an ant. There was no question left in the mind of the reader 
that the boy might have been absorbed in boyish projects and 
did not see the ant. No generous extenuation was allowed; 
the foot went on the ant with deadly precision, and the 
wickedness of that act will be handed down to the seventh 
generation. I feel that the little boy should now be absolved, 
in view of full expiation of his crime through having served as 
a moral lesson to countless young minds, who, in the agere- 
gate, have walked tens of thousands of miles out of their path 
to give right of way to ants, caterpillars and spiders. 
T recall my shrinking desire to let my first instalment of 
white grubs live, and how I deposited six of them in a capa- 
cious bushel basket awaiting my stout-hearted executioner, 
Adam, and how four of them crawled out through the holes 
before the man’s hand appeared. But necessity and Adam’s 
tardy coming have hardened me, and I have gone through 
progressive stages of ferocity, from throwing them over the 
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