Then one of those things called a still, small voice whispered in my ear: “But you should never begin a new job till you have finished the old. Hoe out your row, my son!”
I recognized the latter words as the catch phrase of a moral story in an ancient reader used in my boyhood school days. Oh, these blighting dogmas taught us in our youth! I resisted the still, small voice, but I felt secretly ashamed. That day I finished the orchard by merely taking out unsightly dead wood and a few of the worst suckers; so that one half of it looked naked and one half bearded, even as the half-shaved hunchback in the “Arabian Nights.” I knew I was doing right, yet I felt I was doing wrong, and in my heart of hearts I was never quite happy for a year, till I had that orchard finished.
Meanwhile, Hard Cider had finished the kitchen floor and cut out the new door frame into the dining-room, while the plumbers had mounted the boiler by the range and begun on the piping. Mike and Joe had been busy on the slope to the south, ploughing the most distant portion for the fodder crops and harrowing in load after load of old stable manure from the barn. The next day would bring them into the garden area, so I staked out my contemplated sundial lawn, allowing a liberal 250 feet, and ran the line westward till it came a trifle beyond the last woodshed, whence I ran it north to the shed for the grape arbour. West of the arbour, on the half acre of slope remaining before the plateau was reached, I planned to set out a new orchard–some day. That same night I filled out an order for fifty rambler roses! “I’ll grow ’em on poles, till I can build the trellises,” said I. Then I sat down to my manuscripts.
The next morning I managed to prod myself out of bed at five-thirty, and found that I could do more work before breakfast than in three hours in the evening. I must confess I was a little annoyed at this verification of a hoary superstition. Personally, I like best to work at night, and some day I shall work at night again. It is a goal to strive for. But you cannot drive your brain at night when you’ve been driving your body all day. That, alas! is a drawback on farming.
Reaching my farm at eight, I found Joe harrowing in manure on the garden and Mike sowing peas.
“Can I have the horse to-morrow?” said I.
“Yez cannot,” said Mike. “Sure, we’ll be another day at the least gettin’ the garden ready.”
“But I want to grade my lawn,” I said. “The day after, then?”
“Maybe,” said Mike. “Yez must make lawns when there’s nothin’ else at all to do.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied, and he grinned.