NEW YORK, DECEMBER 8, 1894. 
$1.00 PER YEAR. 
make wife a posy bed, and make it right, and how I 
did it is the thing 1 started out to tell. 
Right away after breakfast one Saturday morning 
in October, I went out in the front yard, and began 
spading up a plot of ground about 13 feet long and 
seven or eight wide. It lay along our drive to the 
road-way, and had long been an unsightly spot by 
reason of so many docks and plantains growing there. 
So unusual an act on my part, did not long go un¬ 
noticed. The four j'l yf Sr 
boys, who see every- 
thing, were soon on f 
the spot demanding /f!''I'''. 
with eager inquiries, j , ij\ 
what I was doing. I J Ij'uti in 
made no very direct m ‘I ll 
answer to their vol- I 
uble interrogatories, \ i' ^ 
when they scudded ' j 
away to their mother ^ ) 1 
with the same set of \ \\' l |I\ 
questions. Very soon [. \ I 
she was by my side, j » ) // 
and silently looked | \ 0 I ^ 
on, while the boys U I 
for a moment silent- B ^ m 
ly looked at both of « ^ i j 
us. After awhile, 
she said, addressing // • 
me in a way she ha^ | 
when she particu- // 
larly desires a favor, “ What are you doing, father?” 
I unbosomed myself at once, and said : “ I’m going 
to make you a posy-bed, mother. 1 ain’t agoing to see 
you digging around with an old knife and hoe any 
more.” 
Ry this time my hired man was on the ground with 
the horses and wagon and some old stable planks. He 
diamped the planks and drove oft’ to a roadside ditch 
at the foot of a small hill, and loaded the wagon with 
My wife is powerful fond of posies, and though 
there are myself and hired man, and four vigorous, 
active, healthy boys in the family, and only one 
woman to look after their endless wants, she is always 
fussing about slips of plants and seeds of posies that 
.somebody has given her. 1 have protested and pro¬ 
tested against her devoting so much time to these 
things, telling her that our plants were our boys, and 
that the attention that she gave them was all she 
could spare of her not overabundant strength. Rut 
she always answered by .saying that it rested her, and 
there the matter would have to rest on my part. Rut 
I confess to have a sneaking admiration for posies my¬ 
self, and being nothing but farmers, I didn’t think we 
needed to cultivate flowers when so many grew wild 
all about us. This, however, made no difference, and 
she went right on with what little time she could get 
by day, working over some little measly po.sy bed 
with an old case-knife and broken-handled hoe ; and, 
for an hour or so after bedtime she studied up those 
fascinating catalogues that florists tantalize so many 
women folks with. 
Ry and by, I came to the conclusion that some of 
those old-time philosophers were right when they said 
that the yearnings of the soul were the natural 
promptings of a higher law, and when they worked 
no one else an injury, they should be gratifled. 
Thinking the matter over in this light, I resolved to 
’lintn:] 
good, nice sand that I knew would be well fertilized 
by wa.shings from the roadway. While he was gone, 
I spaded the ground all over carefully, and then sunk 
the planks in all around the edges, letting them pro¬ 
ject above the surface only four or five inches. I 
spiked them together at the corners, drove stakes at 
the middle, and had the po.sy bed nicely laid out and 
ready for the filling-in material. 
When the sand arrived, we filled in about half of 
the load, and then dumped the rest in a nice heap, 
and the hired man and I started for the woods for a 
load of rich earth and leaf-mold. This was no ea.sy 
thing to get, but we obtained it after awhile, and 
brought it and thoroughly mixed it with the sand and 
sods. Then about two barrowfuls of well-rotted and 
thoroughly pulverized manure were brought and 
mixed near the surface with the other material. The 
extra heap of sand was then spread over all to weight 
it down and give it a smooth appearance. Wife and 
the boys had been interested spectators during all this 
unusual procedure, and when it was all done and 
nicely rounded up, they were all profuse in their com¬ 
mendations. 
“ Now, wife,” I said (feeling just a little proud of 
the work myself), “there is a posy bed that will last 
50 years and then be in good shape.” 
POSSIBILITIES OF THE “ DOLLAR-A-DAY ” MAN IN CITY AND.'(X)UNTRY 
