pastime, but a duty. And you get to regard it so, as the days and the
weeds lengthen.

_Observation._--Nevertheless, what a man needs in gardening is a
cast-iron back, with a hinge in it. The hoe is an ingenious instrument,
calculated to call out a great deal of strength at a great disadvantage.

The striped bug has come, the saddest of the year. He is a moral
double-ender, iron-clad at that. He is unpleasant in two ways. He
burrows in the ground so that you can not find him, and he flies away so
that you can not catch him. He is rather handsome, as bugs go, but
utterly dastardly, in that he gnaws the stem of the plant close to the
ground, and ruins it without any apparent advantage to himself. I find
him on the hills of cucumbers (perhaps it will be a cholera-year, and we
shall not want any), the squashes (small loss), and the melons (which
never ripen). The best way to deal with the striped bug is to sit down
by the hills, and patiently watch for him. If you are spry, you can
annoy him. This, however, takes time. It takes all day and part of the
night. For he flieth in the darkness, and wasteth at noonday. If you get
up before the dew is off the plants,--it goes off very early,--you can
sprinkle soot on the plant (soot is my panacea: if I can get the disease
of a plant reduced to the necessity of soot, I am all right); and soot
is unpleasant to the bug. But the best thing to do is set a toad to
catch the bugs. The toad at once establishes the most intimate relations
with the bug. It is a pleasure to see such unity among the lower
animals. The difficulty is to make the toad stay and watch the hill. If
you know your toad, it is all right. If you do not, you must build a
tight fence round the plants, which the toad can not jump over. This,
however, introduces a new element. I find that I have a zoölogical
garden. It is an unexpected result of my little enterprise, which never