Here I have been working all the season to make a piece of lawn.  It had to be graded and sowed and rolled; and I have been shaving it like a barber.  When it was soft, everything had a tendency to go on to it,—­cows, and especially wandering hackmen.  Hackmen (who are a product of civilization) know a lawn when they see it.  They rather have a fancy for it, and always try to drive so as to cut the sharp borders of it, and leave the marks of their wheels in deep ruts of cut-up, ruined turf.  The other morning, I had just been running the mower over the lawn, and stood regarding its smoothness, when I noticed one, two, three puffs of fresh earth in it; and, hastening thither, I found that the mole had arrived to complete the work of the hackmen.  In a half-hour he had rooted up the ground like a pig.  I found his run-ways.  I waited for him with a spade.  He did not appear; but, the next time I passed by, he had ridged the ground in 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 our way Sunday afternoon and take a plain, simple look at my garden, eat a little lemon ice-cream and jelly-cake, and drink a glass of native lager-beer.  I thought of putting up over my gate, “Welcome to the Nation’s Gardener;” but I hate nonsense, and did n’t do it.  I, however, hoed diligently on Saturday:  what weeds I could n’t remove I buried, so that everything would look all right.  The borders of my drive were trimmed with scissors; and everything that could offend the Eye of the Great was hustled out of the way.