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That House I Bought; A Little Leaf From Life

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[Pg 120] <h2>NINTH PERIOD</h2> By the time I had worn my finger nails to a state of complete dishabille—happy thought!—and had become a hopeless problem for the most sanguine manicurist, I began to learn things really. For instance, this is how a lawn ought to be made: First, grade your ground, then remove all stones and stumps; next roll it and then put on a couple of inches of top soil; then roll that until there isn't a bump in it, sow your grass seed and water constantly, prayerfully. In making our lawn those are the things they didn't do. [Pg 121] I don't dare rake our lawn, because the minute I start, out will come a lot of bolders, leaving terrific yawns in the sod. I'm sure the Duke will forgive me for getting peeved about that lawn, when he understands that there are callouses in my hands and knots in my lawn mower. Also, why on earth, after throwing on the grass seed, do the men drive wagons over it and make ruts and jam their heels into it and make holes, where my vagrant sprinklings with the hose create lakes and puddles and produce never a single grass? With a little preliminary exercise, pushing the big road-roller on Garrison avenue and shoving marble blocks[Pg 122] out of the Courthouse, I tackled our lawn with a new mower, put together by myself in accordance with instructions. Our lawn mower is painted a beautiful green on the blades, to keep out the rust. Also, it was never intended to cut. It would never do, in an emergency, to shave with. Musically, our lawn mower for the first ten feet sang to my soul a song of sweet, rural peace and contentment. Then it struck a snag and changed the tune. In the course of two dashes I discovered that the spectacle of a bald-headed front-yard farmer trotting up and down behind a lawn mower was[Pg 123] a thing to make acquaintance with. Two men I'd never seen in my life stopped and gazed at me, and one of them asked me if I was mowing my lawn. A little girl came by and stood cross-legged with her finger in her mouth, and, when I looked her way, snickered and ran home to tell her mother what a strange sight she had seen. Our grocer lingered to remark that it was a hot afternoon, and as if in confirmation of his remarkable perspicuity a lake of sweat fell like a cloudburst from my brow and drowned a hill of ants. "Don't work so hard," said my wife, as I made another turn. "Why don't you take it easy?" [Pg 124] "I am taking it easy," I replied. "All I need now is a leather chair and a highball to look like the Maryland Club in repose!" Sarcasm is one of my strong points, and my wife realized that she had goaded me into sharp retort, so she giggled at me and ran to the telephone to tell her mother that Henry was perfectly crazy about his new lawn mower and couldn't leave it alone for a minute. With all those people looking on and my lawn mower hitting a rock or a hole every seven revolutions, I felt cheap. I felt as though it might have been myself whose jawbone was broken by Samson, or who bore[Pg 125] Balaam to Jerusalem. The crowd kept growing, and a stream of honest toil rolled down my spine. Somehow or other I finished the job. Then I looked at the crowd. I left the lawn mower and walked over to them with a deadly glare in my eye. "Any of you fellows want to fight?" I demanded rudely. Nobody replied. "Because if you do," I said, "I can tie both hands behind me and lick any six of you right now." The crowd melted away slowly. One man did stay a moment, but he didn't want to fight. He offered to feel my pulse. In spite of his sarcasm, and in the[Pg 126] face of all criticism, I insist that I was beginning to learn. For instance, shall I tell you of the time I astonished Campbell? Campbell was raised in the country. The smell of sod is strong in his nostrils, and he is a handy man with a hoe. Campbell is an agent for the Duke, but time hangs on his hands at moments and he dropped around in a casual sort of way to look at our back yard. "I'm thinking of planting a turnip and some onions," said my wife pleasantly. Campbell smiled. "In that soil," he said, "you'll never make them completely happy. They'll[Pg 127] be crying for home all the time." "What's the matter with the soil?" demanded my wife. "Well, it wasn't built for farming. You always have to put in richer soil. I'll show you." My wife thinks Campbell is just about right. When he began to talk about how he'd enjoy fixing her garden, and would she please let him have the hoe, rake, spade, and a bucket to tote sod from a pile in the front yard, she began to look upon him as a Dispensation of Providence. Agriculturally, I dwindled in importance as he expanded. He cut five rows, or furrows, or ditches, or whatever you call them,[Pg 128] with the hoe, and into them he dropped peas, beans, onions, parsley, and parsnips. Then he brought buckets of top soil and dumped it on the seeds along the line, and raked the soil over until it was smooth, and stuck the empty envelopes at the end of the rows for fear my wife would get the peas identified as corn, the beans as peanuts, the onions as cauliflower, the parsley as rhubarb, the parsnips as turnips. Campbell let me bring some more buckets of soil. For that favor I have begun to question the degree of Campbell's kindness. Then I spoke. "Your rows of top soil will start[Pg 129] the seeds," I said, "but never maintain them when they're out. We must get some commercial fertilizer, and the minute the sprouts show, sprinkle it along the sides of the furrows. Then we must soak the farm with a hose." My wife sneered. "He's right," said Campbell. My wife winked at him to carry on the joke, but he insisted in sign language that I really had the proper dope. She wilted. "Now," I said, "we'll have William throw five loads of top soil into this next patch, over which we will run a plough, mixing it not less than a foot deep. Then we'll cover it down, roll it and soak it for a week. We will[Pg 130] then be ready to plant our tomato vines and more onions, along the rows of which we'll sprinkle our fertilizer about two sacks to ten yards. This temporary work you've done is about as practical as a school of journalism or poetry. We'll let it stand as a horrible example, but all this goes under, too, in the fall. Then we'll dig trenches around the yard, a foot deep, fill in solid with top soil and after a week of settling plant a double row of hedge, one foot apart in length and six inches apart in width. Am I right?" I had her gasping. She stared at me in wonder, and Campbell—well, he just stood with his mouth open like[Pg 131] a catfish, admiring and astounded. That day when a man becomes a hero in his wife's eyes is a triumph such as Napoleon never knew in his greatest moments, and the feel of it outdoes the joy of a Nero in the plaudits of the claque. It isn't necessary to mention that I got it out of a bulletin from the agricultural department. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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