them at a slight advance. There are a great many improvements which
the garden needs; among them a sounding-board, so that the neighbors'
children can hear when I tell them to get a little farther off from the
currant-bushes. I should also like a selection from the ten
commandments, in big letters, posted up conspicuously, and a few traps,
that will detain, but not maim, for the benefit of those who cannot
read. But what is most important is, that the ladies should crochet
nets to cover over the strawberries. A good-sized, well-managed
festival ought to produce nets enough to cover my entire beds; and I
can think of no other method of preserving the berries from the birds
next year. I wonder how many strawberries it would need for a festival
and whether they would cost more than the nets.

I am more and more impressed, as the summer goes on, with the
inequality of man's fight with Nature; especially in a civilized
state. In savagery, it does not much matter; for one does not take a
square hold, and put out his strength, but rather accommodates
himself to the situation, and takes what he can get, without raising
any dust, or putting himself into everlasting opposition. But the
minute he begins to clear a spot larger than he needs to sleep in for
a night, and to try to have his own way in the least, Nature is at
once up, and vigilant, and contests him at every step with all her
ingenuity and unwearied vigor. This talk of subduing Nature is
pretty much nonsense. I do not intend to surrender in the midst of
the summer campaign, yet I cannot but think how much more peaceful my
relations would now be with the primal forces, if I had, let Nature
make the garden according to her own notion. (This is written with
the thermometer at ninety degrees, and the weeds starting up with a
freshness and vigor, as if they had just thought of it for the first
time, and had not been cut down and dragged out every other day since