The neighbors’ small children are also out of place in your garden, in strawberry and currant time.  I hope I appreciate the value of children.  We should soon come to nothing without them, though the Shakers have the best gardens in the world.  Without them the common school would languish.  But the problem is, what to do with them in a garden.  For they are not good to eat, and there is a law against making away with them.  The law is not very well enforced, it is true; for people do thin them out with constant dosing, paregoric, and soothing-syrups, and scanty clothing.  But I, for one, feel that it would not be right, aside from the law, to take the life, even of the smallest child, for the sake of a little fruit, more or less, in the garden.  I may be wrong; but these are my sentiments, and I am not ashamed of them.  When we come, as Bryant says in his “Iliad,” to leave the circus of this life, and join that innumerable caravan which moves, it will be some satisfaction to us, that we have never, in the way of gardening, disposed of even the humblest child unnecessarily.  My plan would be to put them into Sunday-schools more thoroughly, and to give the Sunday-schools an agricultural turn; teaching the children the sacredness of neighbors’ vegetables.  I think that our Sunday-schools do not sufficiently impress upon children the danger, from snakes and otherwise, of going into the neighbors’ gardens.

SIXTH WEEK

Somebody has sent me a new sort of hoe, with the wish that I should speak favorably of it, if I can consistently.  I willingly do so, but with the understanding that I am to be at liberty to speak just as courteously of any other hoe which I may receive.  If I understand religious morals, this is the position of the religious press with regard to bitters and wringing-machines.  In some cases, the responsibility of such a recommendation is shifted upon the wife of the editor or clergy-man.  Polly says she is entirely willing to make a certificate, accompanied with an affidavit, with regard to this hoe; but her habit of sitting about the garden walk, on an inverted flower-pot, while I hoe, some what destroys the practical value of her testimony.

As to this hoe, I do not mind saying that it has changed my view of the desirableness and value of human life.  It has, in fact, made life a holiday to me.  It is made on the principle that man is an upright, sensible, reasonable being, and not a groveling wretch.  It does away with the necessity of the hinge in the back.  The handle is seven and a half feet long.  There are two narrow blades, sharp on both edges, which come together at an obtuse angle in front; and as you walk along with this hoe before you, pushing and pulling with a gentle motion, the weeds fall at every thrust and withdrawal, and the slaughter is immediate and widespread.  When I got this hoe I was troubled with sleepless mornings, pains in the