And funny cracks like that.

Here is where it is going to be difficult to keep to your resolution about not helping.  After the digging, and stoning, and turning-over has been done, and the ground is all nice and soft and loamy, the idea of running a rake softly over the susceptible surface and leaving a beautiful even design in its wake, is almost too tempting to be withstood.

[Illustration:  “Atta boy, forty-nine:  Only one more to go!”]

The worker himself will do all that he can to make it hard for you.  He will rake with evident delight, much longer than is necessary, back and forth, across and back, cocking his head and surveying the pattern and fixing it up along the edges with a care which is nothing short of insulting considering the fact that the whole thing has got to be mussed up again when the planting begins.

If you feel that you can no longer stand it without offering to assist, get down from the fence and go into your own house and up to your own room.  There pray for strength.  By the time you come down, the owner of the garden ought to have stopped raking and got started on the planting.

Here the watcher’s task is almost entirely advisory.  And, for the first part of the planting, he should lie low and say nothing.  Wait until the planter has got his rows marked out and has wobbled along on his knees pressing the seeds into perhaps half the length of his first row.  Then say: 

“Hey there, Charlie!  You’ve got those rows going the wrong way.”

Charlie will say no he hasn’t.  Then he will ask what you mean the wrong way.

“Why, you poor cod, you’ve got them running north and south.  They ought to go east and west.  The sun rises over there, doesn’t it?” (Charlie will attempt to deny this, but you must go right on.) “And it comes on up behind that tree and over my roof and sets over there, doesn’t it?” (By this time, Charlie will be crying with rage.) “Well, just as soon as your beans get up an inch or two they are going to cast a shadow right down the whole row and only those in front will ever get any sun.  You can’t grow things without sun, you know.”

If Charlie takes you seriously and starts in to rearrange his rows in the other direction, you might perhaps get down off the fence and go in the house.  You have done enough.  If he doesn’t take you seriously, you surely had better go in.

IX

THE MANHATTADOR

Announcements have been made of a bull-fight to be held in Madison Square Garden, New York, in which only the more humane features of the Spanish institution are to be retained.  The bull will not be killed, or even hurt, and horses will not be used as bait.

If a bull-fight must be held, this is of course the way to hold it, but what features are to be substituted for the playful gorings and stabbings of the Madrid system?  Something must be done to enrage the bull, otherwise he will just sulk in a corner or walk out on the whole affair.  Following is a suggestion for the program of events: