all directions,--a smooth, beautiful animal, with fur like silk, if
you could only catch him. He appears to enjoy the lawn as much as
the hackmen did. He does not care how smooth it is. He is
constantly mining, and ridging it up. I am not sure but he could be
countermined. I have half a mind to put powder in here and there,
and blow the whole thing into the air. Some folks set traps for the
mole; but my moles never seem to go twice in the same place. I am
not sure but it would bother them to sow the lawn with interlacing
snake-grass (the botanical name of which, somebody writes me, is
devil-grass: the first time I have heard that the Devil has a
botanical name), which would worry them, if it is as difficult for
them to get through it as it is for me.

I do not speak of this mole in any tone of complaint. He is only a
part of the untiring resources which Nature brings against the humble
gardener. I desire to write nothing against him which I should wish
to recall at the last,--nothing foreign to the spirit of that
beautiful saying of the dying boy, "He had no copy-book, which,
dying, he was sorry he had blotted."





EIGHTH WEEK

My garden has been visited by a High Official Person. President
Gr-nt was here just before the Fourth, getting his mind quiet for
that event by a few days of retirement, staying with a friend at the
head of our street; and I asked him if he wouldn't like to come down