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<h2> SIXTH WEEK </h2>
<p>Somebody has sent me a new sort of hoe, with the wish that I should speak
favorably of it, if I can consistently. I willingly do so, but with the
understanding that I am to be at liberty to speak just as courteously of
any other hoe which I may receive. If I understand religious morals, this
is the position of the religious press with regard to bitters and
wringing-machines. In some cases, the responsibility of such a
recommendation is shifted upon the wife of the editor or clergy-man. Polly
says she is entirely willing to make a certificate, accompanied with an
affidavit, with regard to this hoe; but her habit of sitting about the
garden walk, on an inverted flower-pot, while I hoe, some what destroys
the practical value of her testimony.</p>
<p>As to this hoe, I do not mind saying that it has changed my view of the
desirableness and value of human life. It has, in fact, made life a
holiday to me. It is made on the principle that man is an upright,
sensible, reasonable being, and not a groveling wretch. It does away with
the necessity of the hinge in the back. The handle is seven and a half
feet long. There are two narrow blades, sharp on both edges, which come
together at an obtuse angle in front; and as you walk along with this hoe
before you, pushing and pulling with a gentle motion, the weeds fall at
every thrust and withdrawal, and the slaughter is immediate and
widespread. When I got this hoe I was troubled with sleepless mornings,
pains in the back, kleptomania with regard to new weeders; when I went
into my garden I was always sure to see something. In this disordered
state of mind and body I got this hoe. The morning after a day of using it
I slept perfectly and late. I regained my respect for the eighth
commandment. After two doses of the hoe in the garden, the weeds entirely
disappeared. Trying it a third morning, I was obliged to throw it over the
fence in order to save from destruction the green things that ought to
grow in the garden. Of course, this is figurative language. What I mean
is, that the fascination of using this hoe is such that you are sorely
tempted to employ it upon your vegetables, after the weeds are laid low,
and must hastily withdraw it, to avoid unpleasant results. I make this
explanation, because I intend to put nothing into these agricultural
papers that will not bear the strictest scientific investigation; nothing
that the youngest child cannot understand and cry for; nothing that the
oldest and wisest men will not need to study with care.</p>
<p>I need not add that the care of a garden with this hoe becomes the merest
pastime. I would not be without one for a single night. The only danger
is, that you may rather make an idol of the hoe, and somewhat neglect your
garden in explaining it, and fooling about with it. I almost think that,
with one of these in the hands of an ordinary day-laborer, you might see
at night where he had been working.</p>
<p>Let us have peas. I have been a zealous advocate of the birds. I have
rejoiced in their multiplication. I have endured their concerts at four
o'clock in the morning without a murmur. Let them come, I said, and eat
the worms, in order that we, later, may enjoy the foliage and the fruits
of the earth. We have a cat, a magnificent animal, of the sex which votes
(but not a pole-cat),—so large and powerful that, if he were in the
army, he would be called Long Tom. He is a cat of fine disposition, the
most irreproachable morals I ever saw thrown away in a cat, and a splendid
hunter. He spends his nights, not in social dissipation, but in gathering
in rats, mice, flying-squirrels, and also birds. When he first brought me
a bird, I told him that it was wrong, and tried to convince him, while he
was eating it, that he was doing wrong; for he is a reasonable cat, and
understands pretty much everything except the binomial theorem and the
time down the cycloidal arc. But with no effect. The killing of birds went
on, to my great regret and shame.</p>
<p>The other day I went to my garden to get a mess of peas. I had seen, the
day before, that they were just ready to pick. How I had lined the ground,
planted, hoed, bushed them! The bushes were very fine,—seven feet
high, and of good wood. How I had delighted in the growing, the blowing,
the podding! What a touching thought it was that they had all podded for
me! When I went to pick them, I found the pods all split open, and the
peas gone. The dear little birds, who are so fond of the strawberries, had
eaten them all. Perhaps there were left as many as I planted: I did not
count them. I made a rapid estimate of the cost of the seed, the interest
of the ground, the price of labor, the value of the bushes, the anxiety of
weeks of watchfulness. I looked about me on the face of Nature. The wind
blew from the south so soft and treacherous! A thrush sang in the woods so
deceitfully! All Nature seemed fair. But who was to give me back my peas?
The fowls of the air have peas; but what has man?</p>
<p>I went into the house. I called Calvin. (That is the name of our cat,
given him on account of his gravity, morality, and uprightness. We never
familiarly call him John). I petted Calvin. I lavished upon him an
enthusiastic fondness. I told him that he had no fault; that the one
action that I had called a vice was an heroic exhibition of regard for my
interests. I bade him go and do likewise continually. I now saw how much
better instinct is than mere unguided reason. Calvin knew. If he had put
his opinion into English (instead of his native catalogue), it would have
been: “You need not teach your grandmother to suck eggs.” It was only the
round of Nature. The worms eat a noxious something in the ground. The
birds eat the worms. Calvin eats the birds. We eat—no, we do not eat
Calvin. There the chain stops. When you ascend the scale of being, and
come to an animal that is, like ourselves, inedible, you have arrived at a
result where you can rest. Let us respect the cat. He completes an edible
chain.</p>
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<p>I have little heart to discuss methods of raising peas. It occurs to me
that I can have an iron peabush, a sort of trellis, through which I could
discharge electricity at frequent intervals, and electrify the birds to
death when they alight: for they stand upon my beautiful brush in order to
pick out the peas. An apparatus of this kind, with an operator, would
cost, however, about as much as the peas. A neighbor suggests that I might
put up a scarecrow near the vines, which would keep the birds away. I am
doubtful about it: the birds are too much accustomed to seeing a person in
poor clothes in the garden to care much for that. Another neighbor
suggests that the birds do not open the pods; that a sort of blast, apt to
come after rain, splits the pods, and the birds then eat the peas. It may
be so. There seems to be complete unity of action between the blast and
the birds. But, good neighbors, kind friends, I desire that you will not
increase, by talk, a disappointment which you cannot assuage.</p>
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