fefiieIjtiMgtiflnD
VOL. V., NO. 10.
PIXEIIUJ1ST, N. C. J AX. 17, 1902
PI? ICE TIUSEE CENTS
JULIA AND GEORGE.
A Brief Description ol Their Manner of
Plowing for an Amateur Gardener.
WEEDING THE ONION BED.
There seems to be no subject about
which a man may fool himself so com
pletely as concerning his ability to plant
seeds and make them grow. It may be
perfectly clear in his mind that he is not
ii poet. Very likely he is not cherishing
expectations of being President of the
United States. He may frankly confess
that he could not lead an orchestra, or
swallow swords in a dime museum, or
become a great showman like Barnum,
or a great pieacher like Talmage, or a
great exhaustless fountain of speeches
like Chauncey Depew. lie would not
attempt to run a locomotive or a bank.
He might even consider the presidency
of a university beyond his powers. But
neither rock nor red-hot pincers nor
thumb-screws would even make him
admit that lie could not plant a garden,
and in good time bring it to bearing. No
matter if he doesn't know the exact dif
ference between a plow and a lawn
mower, and never saw vegetables nearer
to their native haunts than in a market
store, lie feels such confidence in Mother
Nature that he is ready to go out and
oiler her all the treasures of his ignor
ance and incapacity in order that she
may reward him with bountiful crops of
such things as will make the gladness of
his heart appear in the shining of his
face. This is why it happens that "in
the spring the foolish fancy lightly
turns to thoughts of making u garden,"
if we may be allowed to quote a slightly
amended passage from Tennyson. This
is why men, usually rational, perform
such antics with rakes and hoes and
other instruments they know nothing
about, when the spring madness is upon
them. April showers forsooth! They
are rather the tears of angels who look
down and weep to see what folly men
commit and call it farming.
Once upon a time spring allured an
agriculturalist of this stamp from the
frozen North down into the neighbor
hood of Pinehurst. By the time he
reached there the planting fever was
raging in all liis veins. Nature was all
astir in answer to the summons of the
sun. She was making vast prepartion
for her annual forth-putting of bud and
leaf and flower, and he poor, foolish
man thought that was going to be
admitted into her secrets, and become
one of her chief assistants. To be sure
he had no land, no seeds, no tools, no
hands except his own unpracticed ones,
and no more knowledge of farming than
the founder of the Concord school of
philosophy. But he cared for none of
these things. There was plenty of land,
lie could buy or hire or borrow enough
to dispoit himself upon. Seeds? Any
honest citizen can get seeds, provided lie
is a voter. For what purpose do we sup
port an Agricultural Department at
Washington, if not to supply seeds to
amateur gardeners? The plowing could
be done by a colored man and a mule,
and as for the rest his own heaven-born
genius would be equal to all other
demands.
And then he tried to recall past
triumphs of his art as a gardener. He
went back to the days of his boyhood
and attempted to picture his toils and
successes among the loved vegetables
"that his infancy knew" But to save
his life he could remember only two
experiences. One was when he planted
shiny black watermelon seeds with great
hungry it was. Then he went to the
nearest village to hire a man and a mule.
"Yes," the owner of the mule said, "1
can send you a mule and a good plow
hand. But I reckon I'd better not send
till evening. This mule is a right smart
kicker, and the boy can't do anything
with her at plowing unless he works her
hard all the morning so as to get her
tired enough to be quiet and reasonable.
About three o'clock this evening she'll
be fit for plowing, I reckon, and I'll send
her round."
It was not that afternoon or "even
ing" according to the Southern usage
but the next, when a very serious col
ored brother accompanied by a sad,
tired, but unconquered mule appeared on
the scene. The proprietor of the garden
spent the next two hours sitting on the
fence (with slight interruptions caused
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PARLOR OF THE CAROLINA.
care, watched over the growing plants
all summer with yearning unspeakable
and was rewarded in the fall with a crop
of stoney-hearted citrons. The other
was when the old farmer for whom he
was at work left him to weed the onion
bed, while he went to a distant field.
What a glorious morning that was, and
how vigorously he worked ! With what
tierce energy he tore the weeds out of
the earth ! In two hours time, when the
farmer came back, the onion bed showed
not a vestige of anything green or living.
The boy straightened up his aching back
and looked at his employer with con
scious virtue beaming from his eyes and
was amazed to see a dark cloud upon the
farmer's brow, and to hear him gasp and
sputter with rage because his onions had
all been pulled up with the weeds.
But even such chilling recollections as
these could not cool his ferver. He made
haste to secure a piece of land, a gener
ous supply of seeds, a few tools, and a
very stingy provision of fertilizer, just
enough to make the soil realize how
by falling off) and says he never enjoyed
anything better in his life than the
simple little pastoral which Julia (the
mule) and George (her serious-minded
friend) proceeded to enact.
All the time she was being shifted
from the light wagon to the light plow
Julia kicked and squealed.
"She may be tired," said the man on
the fence, "but evidently she isn't
exhausted." George didn't say anything.
He was busy trying to pull the plow
down out of the air so that he could slick
the point of it into the soil. By and by
he succeeded, and Julia, realizing that he
had gained his point, started oft' at a
lively pace toward the lower end of the
garden. The man on the fence applauded
One furrow had been made and he
thought the battle was ended. But he
was mistaken. Julia was one of the old
guard. In the the bright lexicon of her
mulehood there was no such word as sur
render. The plow was no sooner out of
the soil at the end of the furrow than up
it went into the air, on a level with
Julia's heels. George managed to keep
hold of the handles and gravity on his
face deepened, but even then he did not
say anything. His dignity was in marked
contrast to the deportment of the man
on the fence who had just fallen ofF
apparently in a fit. Once more George
conquered and another furrow was
accomplished. At the next turn there
was the usual performance, Julia insist
ing upon plowing the circumambient air,
and George manfully endeavoring to
bring her and the plow down to their
proper earthly level, and then a little
variety was introduced by the breaking
of one of the rope reins. As a result
George was flung violently to one side
and did not stop until he was nearly half
way across the garden spot. He scooped
up considerable sand as he went, but did
not appear to be injured except in his
feelings. These were so stirred that at
last the fountain -of his speech came
bursting up: "Whoa, dar Julia, whoa
dar," he yelled, "didn't 1 done and tole
yer befo' we begun on dis piece dat I'd
gib yo' de bigges' frailing you ebber had
in yo' life, if yo' acted out any mo' ob
yore foolishness. An' now 1'se gwine
gib yo' jes' what I tole yo' I wud. Yas,
I'se kwine to wear yo' out wid this stick,
if its de las' act."
And he did. With the solemnity of
judge and executioner combined, he
unhitched Julia from the plow, took her
out into the middle of the lot where there
was plenty of room and gave her a good
sound thrashing.
It would probably be too much to
claim that Julia enjoyed it. But she
knew that she deserved it and that it was
good for her, and she liked George none
the less for having given it to her. For
a while afterward she kicked only at
every other furrow and then with con
siderably less than her former fury. But
her goodness did not last her quite
through. When the work was about
three-fouths done, she had a relapse,
and once more George had to come to an
understanding with her by the agency
of a stout stick. Even at the last, when
the plowing was all done and George was
once more hitching her into the light
wagon, she could not resist the tempta
tion to aim a playful kick at him which
missed his head by about half an inch.
"Yes, I got itplante'd," said the man
who had been telling how he had his
garden plowed.
"Well, how did things grow?" He
shook his head mysteriously. "That's
something 1 never could make out," said
he. "There was something strange and
uncanny about that garden. It didn't
seem like any of the gardens 'round it.
The seeds were all right, but the things
that came up didn't look as if they grew
from those seeds or from any other, for
that matter. They had a sort of lan
guishing, unearthly look that almost
made my flesh creep."
"Do you know," he added, thought
fully, "1 have sometimes wondered if it
if