hay is carefully weighed, the moisture calculated, the silicates and the potash; but in all dells and pond-holes in the woods and pastures and swamps grows a rich and various crop only unreaped by man. Mine was, as it were, the connecting link between wild and cultivated fields; as some states are civilized, and others half-civilized, and others savage or barbarous, so my field was, though not in a bad sense, a half-cultivated field. They were beans cheerfully returning to their wild and primitive state that I cultivated, and my hoe played the “Ranz des Vaches” for them.

Near at hand, upon the topmost spray of a birch, sings the brown thrasher⁠—or red mavis, as some love to call him⁠—all the morning, glad of your society, that would find out another farmer’s field if yours were not here. While you are planting the seed, he cries⁠—“Drop it, drop it⁠—cover it up, cover it up⁠—pull it up, pull it up, pull it up.” But this was not corn, and so it was safe from such enemies as he. You may wonder what his rigmarole, his amateur Paganini performances on one string or on twenty, have to do with your planting, and yet prefer it to leached ashes or plaster. It was a cheap sort of top dressing in which I had entire faith.