My Summer in a Garden | Page 6

comes back to a man after
he has run the round of pleasure and business, eaten dirt, and sown
wild-oats, drifted about the world, and taken the wind of all its moods.
The love of digging in the ground (or of looking on while he pays
another to dig) is as sure to come back to him as he is sure, at last, to go
under the ground, and stay there. To own a bit of ground, to scratch it
with a hoe, to plant seeds and watch, their renewal of life, this is the
commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do.
When Cicero writes of the pleasures of old age, that of agriculture is
chief among them:

"Venio nunc ad voluptates agricolarum, quibus ego incredibiliter
delector: quae nec ulla impediuntur senectute, et mihi ad sapientis
vitam proxime videntur accedere." (I am driven to Latin because New
York editors have exhausted the English language in the praising of
spring, and especially of the month of May.)
Let us celebrate the soil. Most men toil that they may own a piece of it;
they measure their success in life by their ability to buy it. It is alike the
passion of the parvenu and the pride of the aristocrat. Broad acres are a
patent of nobility; and no man but feels more, of a man in the world if
he have a bit of ground that he can call his own. However small it is on
the surface, it is four thousand miles deep; and that is a very handsome
property. And there is a great pleasure in working in the soil, apart from
the ownership of it. The man who has planted a garden feels that he has
done something for the good of the World. He belongs to the producers.
It is a pleasure to eat of the fruit of one's toil, if it be nothing more than
a head of lettuce or an ear of corn. One cultivates a lawn even with
great satisfaction; for there is nothing more beautiful than grass and turf
in our latitude. The tropics may have their delights, but they have not
turf: and the world without turf is a dreary desert. The original Garden
of Eden could not have had such turf as one sees in England. The
Teutonic races all love turf: they emigrate in the line of its growth.
To dig in the mellow soil-to dig moderately, for all pleasure should be
taken sparingly--is a great thing. One gets strength out of the ground as
often as one really touches it with a hoe. Antaeus (this is a classical
article) was no doubt an agriculturist; and such a prize-fighter as
Hercules could n't do anything with him till he got him to lay down his
spade, and quit the soil. It is not simply beets and potatoes and corn and
string-beans that one raises in his well- hoed garden: it is the average of
human life. There is life in the ground; it goes into the seeds; and it also,
when it is stirred up, goes into the man who stirs it. The hot sun on his
back as he bends to his shovel and hoe, or contemplatively rakes the
warm and fragrant loam, is better than much medicine. The buds are
coming out on the bushes round about; the blossoms of the fruit trees
begin to show; the blood is running up the grapevines in streams; you
can smell the Wild flowers on the near bank; and the birds are flying
and glancing and singing everywhere. To the open kitchen door comes
the busy housewife to shake a white something, and stands a moment

to look, quite transfixed by the delightful sights and sounds. Hoeing in
the garden on a bright, soft May day, when you are not obliged to, is
nearly equal to the delight of going trouting.
Blessed be agriculture! if one does not have too much of it. All
literature is fragrant with it, in a gentlemanly way. At the foot of the
charming olive-covered hills of Tivoli, Horace (not he of Chappaqua)
had a sunny farm: it was in sight of Hadrian's villa, who did landscape
gardening on an extensive scale, and probably did not get half as much
comfort out of it as Horace did from his more simply tilled acres. We
trust that Horace did a little hoeing and farming himself, and that his
verse is not all fraudulent sentiment. In order to enjoy agriculture, you
do not want too much of it, and you want to be poor enough to have a
little inducement to work moderately yourself. Hoe while it is spring,
and enjoy the best anticipations. It is not much matter if things do not
turn