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A GIRL'S GARDEN

  A neighbor of mine in the village
    Likes to tell how one spring
  When she was a girl on the farm, she did
    A childlike thing.

  One day she asked her father
    To give her a garden plot
  To plant and tend and reap herself,
    And he said, "Why not?"

  In casting about for a corner
    He thought of an idle bit
  Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
    And he said, "Just it."

  And he said, "That ought to make you
    An ideal one-girl farm,
  And give you a chance to put some strength
    On your slim-jim arm."

  It was not enough of a garden,
    Her father said, to plough;
  So she had to work it all by hand,
    But she don't mind now.

  She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow
    Along a stretch of road;
  But she always ran away and left
    Her not-nice load.

  And hid from anyone passing.
    And then she begged the seed.
  She says she thinks she planted one
    Of all things but weed.

  A hill each of potatoes,
    Radishes, lettuce, peas,
  Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,
    And even fruit trees.

  And yes, she has long mistrusted
    That a cider apple tree
  In bearing there to-day is hers,
    Or at least may be.

  Her crop was a miscellany
    When all was said and done,
  A little bit of everything,
    A great deal of none.

  _Now_ when she sees in the village
    How village things go,
  Just when it seems to come in right,
    She says, "_I_ know!

  It's as when I was a farmer----"
    Oh, never by way of advice!
  And she never sins by telling the tale
    To the same person twice.