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, " / 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.