Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1918 — PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON [ARTICLE]

PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON

I’ve spaded up my acre lot, to make a wartime garden; ’twill be the smoothest little plot you ever saw a bard in. I’ve sown the kind of. boneless greens that used to please our daddies, and I have beds of peas and beans and leeks and finnan haddies. And neighbors come along and say, “In vain is all your toiling! For vagrant hens will come this way, your treasured garden spoiling. And dogs will come, and once or twice they’ll wallow in your lettuce; then you’ll recall our sage advice, ah, then you won't forget us! And when the moonlight, white, intense, the world in silver washes, a cow will climb your garden fence, and eat your Hubbard squashes. Some night a horse, from halter free, perhaps a gray with dapples, will come and climb up yonder tree and swallow all your apples. And hogs will come from distant pens, long leagues they’ll come a-kiting, to eat the onions that the hens passed up as uninviting. Oh. we have raised such garden sass, to feed such vagrant varmints, and we have wept and cried 'Alas!’ and torn our beards and garments.” It's such encouragement as this I get when I am TU' 1 -• . - hoeing, and it destroys the peaceful bliss I felt, to see things growing. '