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1As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my hoe, I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval
2years lived under these heavens, and their small implements of war and hunting were brought to the light of this modern
3day. They lay mingled with other natural stones, some of which bore the marks of having been burned by Indian fires, and
4some by the sun, and also bits of pottery and glass brought hither by the recent cultivators of the soil. When my hoe
5tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which
6yielded an instant and immeasurable crop. It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed beans; and I remembered
7with as much pity as pride, if I remembered at all, my acquaintances who had gone to the city to attend the oratorios.
8The night-hawk circled overhead in the sunny afternoons--for I sometimes made a day of it--like a mote in the eye, or in
9heaven's eye, falling from time to time with a swoop and a sound as if the heavens were rent, torn at last to very rags
10and tatters, and yet a seamless cope remained; small imps that fill the air and lay their eggs on the ground on bare
11sand or rocks on the tops of hills, where few have found them; graceful and slender like ripples caught up from the
12pond, as leaves are raised by the wind to float in the heavens; such kindredship is in Nature. The hawk is aerial
13brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental
14unfledged pinions of the sea. Or sometimes I watched a pair of hen-hawks circling high in the sky, alternately soaring
15and descending, approaching, and leaving one another, as if they were the embodiment of my own thoughts. Or I was
16attracted by the passage of wild pigeons from this wood to that, with a slight quivering winnowing sound and carrier
17haste; or from under a rotten stump my hoe turned up a sluggish portentous and outlandish spotted salamander, a trace of
18Egypt and the Nile, yet our contemporary. When I paused to lean on my hoe, these sounds and sights I heard and saw
19anywhere in the row, a part of the inexhaustible entertainment which the country offers. On gala days the town fires its
20great guns, which echo like popguns to these woods, and some waifs of martial music occasionally penetrate thus far. To
21me, away there in my bean-field at the other end of the town, the big guns sounded as if a puffball had burst; and when
22there was a military turnout of which I was ignorant, I have sometimes had a vague sense all the day of some sort of
23itching and disease in the horizon, as if some eruption would break out there soon, either scarlatina or canker-rash,
24until at length some more favorable puff of wind, making haste over the fields and up the Wayland road, brought me
25information of the "trainers." It seemed by the distant hum as if somebody's bees had swarmed, and that the neighbors,
26according to Virgil's advice, by a faint tintinnabulum upon the most sonorous of their domestic utensils, were
27endeavoring to call them down into the hive again. And when the sound died quite away, and the hum had ceased, and the
28most favorable breezes told no tale, I knew that they had got the last drone of them all safely into the Middlesex hive,
29and that now their minds were bent on the honey with which it was smeared. I felt proud to know that the liberties of
30Massachusetts and of our fatherland were in such safe keeping; and as I turned to my hoeing again I was filled with an
31inexpressible confidence, and pursued my labor cheerfully with a calm trust in the future. When there were several bands
32of musicians, it sounded as if all the village was a vast bellows, and all the buildings expanded and collapsed
33alternately with a din. But sometimes it was a really noble and inspiring strain that reached these woods, and the
34trumpet that sings of fame, and I felt as if I could spit a Mexican with a good relish,--for why should we always stand
35for trifles?--and looked round for a woodchuck or a skunk to exercise my chivalry upon. These martial strains seemed as
36far away as Palestine, and reminded me of a march of crusaders in the horizon, with a slight tantivy and tremulous
37motion of the elm-tree tops which overhang the village. This was one of the great days; though the sky had from my
38clearing only the same everlastingly great look that it wears daily, and I saw no difference in it. It was a singular
39experience that long acquaintance which I cultivated with beans, what with planting, and hoeing, and harvesting, and
40threshing, and picking over and selling them,--the last was the hardest of all,--I might add eating, for I did taste. I
41was determined to know beans. When they were growing, I used to hoe from five o'clock in the morning till noon, and
42commonly spent the rest of the day about other affairs. Consider the intimate and curious acquaintance one makes with
43various kinds of weeds,--it will bear some iteration in the account, for there was no little iteration in the
44labor,--disturbing their delicate organizations so ruthlessly, and making such invidious distinctions with his hoe,
45levelling whole ranks of one species, and sedulously cultivating another. That's Roman wormwood,--that's
46pigweed,--that's sorrel,--that's piper-grass,--have at him, chop him up, turn his roots upward to the sun, don't let him
47have a fibre in the shade, if you do he'll turn himself t'other side up and be as green as a leek in two days. A long
48war, not with cranes, but with weeds, those Trojans who had sun and rain and dews on their side. Daily the beans saw me
49come to their rescue armed with a hoe, and thin the ranks of their enemies, filling up the trenches with weedy dead.
50Many a lusty crest-waving Hector, that towered a whole foot above his crowding comrades, fell before my weapon and
51rolled in the dust. Those summer days which some of my contemporaries devoted to the fine arts in Boston or Rome, and
52others to contemplation in India, and others to trade in London or New York, I thus, with the other farmers of New
53England, devoted to husbandry. Not that I wanted beans to eat, for I am by nature a Pythagorean, so far as beans are
54concerned, whether they mean porridge or voting, and exchanged them for rice; but, perchance, as some must work in
55fields if only for the sake of tropes and expression, to serve a parable-maker one day. It was on the whole a rare
56amusement, which, continued too long, might have become a dissipation. Though I gave them no manure, and did not hoe
57them all once, I hoed them unusually well as far as I went, and was paid for it in the end, "there being in truth," as
58Evelyn says, "no compost or lætation whatsoever comparable to this continual motion, repastination, and turning of the
59mould with the spade." "The earth," he adds elsewhere, "especially if fresh, has a certain magnetism in it, by which it
60attracts the salt, power, or virtue (call it either) which gives it life, and is the logic of all the labor and stir we
61keep about it, to sustain us; all dungings and other sordid temperings being but the vicars succedaneous to this
62improvement." Moreover, this being one of those "worn-out and exhausted lay fields which enjoy their sabbath," had
63perchance, as Sir Kenelm Digby thinks likely, attracted "vital spirits" from the air. I harvested twelve bushels of
64beans. But to be more particular, for it is complained that Mr. Coleman has reported chiefly the expensive experiments
65of gentlemen farmers, my outgoes were,-- For a hoe,.................................. $ 0.54 Ploughing, harrowing, and
66furrowing,......... 7.50 Too much. Beans for seed,.............................. 3.12½ Potatoes for
67seed,........................... 1.33 Peas for seed,............................... 0.40 Turnip
68seed,................................. 0.06 White line for crow fence,................... 0.02 Horse cultivator and boy
69three hours,........ 1.00 Horse and cart to get crop,.................. 0.75 -------- In
70all,................................. $14.72½ My income was (patrem familias vendacem, non emacem esse oportet), from
71Nine bushels and twelve quarts of beans sold,. $16.94 Five " large potatoes,.................... 2.50 Nine "
72small,............................. 2.25 Grass,.......................................... 1.00
73Stalks,......................................... 0.75 -------- In all,................................... $23.44 Leaving
74a pecuniary profit, as I have elsewhere said, of.............. $8.71½.
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