TWELFTH WEEK

Mr. Horace Greeley, the introduction of whose name confers an honor upon this page (although I ought to say that it is used entirely without his consent), is my sole authority in agriculture.  In politics I do not dare to follow him; but in agriculture he is irresistible.  When, therefore, I find him advising Western farmers not to hill up their corn, I think that his advice must be political.  You must hill up your corn.  People always have hilled up their corn.  It would take a constitutional amendment to change the practice, that has pertained ever since maize was raised.  “It will stand the drought better,” says Mr. Greeley, “if the ground is left level.”  I have corn in my garden, ten and twelve feet high, strong and lusty, standing the drought like a grenadier; and it is hilled.  In advising this radical change, Mr. Greeley evidently has a political purpose.  He might just as well say that you should not hill beans, when everybody knows that a “hill of beans” is one of the most expressive symbols of disparagement.  When I become too lazy to hill my corn, I, too, shall go into politics.

I am satisfied that it is useless to try to cultivate “pusley.”  I set a little of it one side, and gave it some extra care.  It did not thrive as well as that which I was fighting.  The fact is, there is a spirit of moral perversity in the plant, which makes it grow the more, the more it is interfered with.  I am satisfied of that.  I doubt if any one has raised more “pusley” this year than I have; and my warfare with it has been continual.  Neither of us has slept much.  If you combat it, it will grow, to use an expression that will be understood by many, like the devil.  I have a neighbor, a good Christian man, benevolent, and a person of good judgment.  He planted next to me an acre of turnips recently.  A few days after, he went to look at his crop; and he found the entire ground covered with a thick and luxurious carpet of “pusley,” with a turnip-top worked in here and there as an ornament.  I have seldom seen so thrifty a field.  I advised my neighbor next time to sow “pusley” and then he might get a few turnips.  I wish there was more demand in our city markets for “pusley” as a salad.  I can recommend it.

It does not take a great man to soon discover that, in raising anything, the greater part of the plants goes into stalk and leaf, and the fruit is a most inconsiderable portion.  I plant and hoe a hill of corn:  it grows green and stout, and waves its broad leaves high in the air, and is months in perfecting itself, and then yields us not enough for a dinner.  It grows because it delights to do so, —­to take the juices out of my ground, to absorb my fertilizers, to wax luxuriant, and disport itself in the summer air, and with very little thought of making any return to me.  I might go all through my garden and fruit trees with a similar result.  I have heard of places