“Polly, do you know who planted that squash, or those squashes?”

“James, I suppose.”

“Well, yes, perhaps James did plant them, to a certain extent.  But who hoed them?”

“We did.”

“We did!” I said, in the most sarcastic manner.

And I suppose we put on the sackcloth and ashes, when the striped bug came at four o’clock A.M., and we watched the tender leaves, and watered night and morning the feeble plants.  “I tell you, Polly,” said I, uncorking the Bordeaux raspberry vinegar, “there is not a pea here that does not represent a drop of moisture wrung from my brow, not a beet that does not stand for a back-ache, not a squash that has not caused me untold anxiety; and I did hope—­but I will say no more.”

Observation.—­In this sort of family discussion, “I will say no more” is the most effective thing you can close up with.

I am not an alarmist.  I hope I am as cool as anybody this hot summer.  But I am quite ready to say to Polly, or any other woman, “You can have the ballot; only leave me the vegetables, or, what is more important, the consciousness of power in vegetables.”  I see how it is.  Woman is now supreme in the house.  She already stretches out her hand to grasp the garden.  She will gradually control everything.  Woman is one of the ablest and most cunning creatures who have ever 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 of contact with the earth, and companionship with gently growing things and patient processes; that exercise which soothes the spirit, and develops the deltoid muscles.