mingled in human affairs. I understand those women who say they
don't want the ballot. They purpose to hold the real power while we
go through the mockery of making laws. They want the power without
the responsibility. (Suppose my squash had not come up, or my beans-
-as they threatened at one time--had gone the wrong way: where would
I have been?) We are to be held to all the responsibilities. Woman
takes the lead in all the departments, leaving us politics only. And
what is politics? Let me raise the vegetables of a nation, says
Polly, and I care not who makes its politics. Here I sat at the
table, armed with the ballot, but really powerless among my own
vegetables. While we are being amused by the ballot, woman is
quietly taking things into her own hands.




ELEVENTH WEEK

Perhaps, after all, it is not what you get out of a garden, but what
you put into it, that is the most remunerative. What is a man? A
question frequently asked, and never, so far as I know,
satisfactorily answered. He commonly spends his seventy years, if so
many are given him, in getting ready to enjoy himself. How many
hours, how many minutes, does one get of that pure content which is
happiness? I do not mean laziness, which is always discontent; but
that serene enjoyment, in which all the natural senses have easy
play, and the unnatural ones have a holiday. There is probably
nothing that has such a tranquilizing effect, and leads into such
content as gardening. By gardening, I do not mean that insane desire
to raise vegetables which some have; but the philosophical occupation