You then have no anxiety,
and little work. If you do things by the job, you are perpetually
driven: the hours are scourges. If you work by the hour, you gently sail
on the stream of Time, which is always bearing you on to the haven of
Pay, whether you make any effort, or not. Working by the hour tends to
make one moral. A plumber working by the job, trying to unscrew a rusty,
refractory nut, in a cramped position, where the tongs continually
slipped off, would swear; but I never heard one of them swear, or
exhibit the least impatience at such a vexation, working by the hour.
Nothing can move a man who is paid by the hour. How sweet the flight of
time seems to his calm mind!
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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