a money-value upon my delight in it.  I fear that you could not put it in money.  Job had the right idea in his mind when he asked, “Is there any taste in the white of an egg?” Suppose there is not!  What! shall I set a price upon the tender asparagus or the crisp lettuce, which made the sweet spring a reality?  Shall I turn into merchandise the red strawberry, the pale green pea, the high-flavored raspberry, the sanguinary beet, that love-plant the tomato, and the corn which did not waste its sweetness on the desert air, but, after flowing in a sweet rill through all our summer life, mingled at last with the engaging bean in a pool of succotash?  Shall I compute in figures what daily freshness and health and delight the garden yields, let alone the large crop of anticipation I gathered as soon as the first seeds got above ground?  I appeal to any gardening man of sound mind, if that which pays him best in gardening is not that which he cannot show in his trial-balance.  Yet I yield to public opinion, when I proceed to make such a balance; and I do it with the utmost confidence in figures.

I select as a representative vegetable, in order to estimate the cost of gardening, the potato.  In my statement, I shall not include the interest on the value of the land.  I throw in the land, because it would otherwise have stood idle:  the thing generally raised on city land is taxes.  I therefore make the following statement of the cost and income of my potato-crop, a part of it estimated in connection with other garden labor.  I have tried to make it so as to satisfy the income-tax collector:—­

Plowing.......................................$0.50
Seed..........................................$1.50
Manure........................................ 8.00
Assistance in planting and digging, 3 days.... 6.75
Labor of self in planting, hoeing, digging,
picking up, 5 days at 17 cents........... 0.85
_____
Total Cost................$17.60

Two thousand five hundred mealy potatoes,
at 2 cents..............................$50.00
Small potatoes given to neighbor’s pig.......  .50

Total return..............$50.50

Balance, profit in cellar......$32.90

Some of these items need explanation.  I have charged nothing for my own time waiting for the potatoes to grow.  My time in hoeing, fighting weeds, etc., is put in at five days:  it may have been a little more.  Nor have I put in anything for cooling drinks while hoeing.  I leave this out from principle, because I always recommend water to others.  I had some difficulty in fixing the rate of my own wages.  It was the first time I had an opportunity of paying what I thought labor was worth; and I determined to make a good thing of it for once.  I figured it right down to European prices,—­seventeen cents a day for unskilled labor.  Of course, I boarded myself.  I ought to say that I fixed the wages after the work was done, or I might have been tempted to do as some masons did who worked for me at four dollars a day.  They lay in the shade and slept the sleep of honest toil full half the time, at least all the time I was away.  I have reason to believe that when the wages of mechanics are raised to eight and ten dollars a day, the workmen will not come at all:  they will merely send their cards.