The Unseen Labor of a Garden Hand

As the sound of his retreating footsteps died away, I threw myself down upon the spot of pale green grass under the forsythia bush, which spread its yellow sprays above me, like some gorgeous Oriental fan. As I glanced up at it, it seemed to me that those graceful and delicate branches had caught the first light of the coming summer. The sun came up, the light of active life—the hot flame which fires men’s blood with the ardor of conflict and enterprise—and the ghost of the mist melted away. It was high noon when I awoke. A man passed by, walking along the road; a man bent with age and labor. 'Such it is to move,' thought I; 'he toils, he struggles, he moves on unresting; and at the end of it he is faded, and wrinkled, and burned with the unpitying sun.' Under the forsythia bush is happiness. I slept until the hushed time of growing shadows came, and hearing the roar and shriek of a far-off train, the first one which came from the great city in the afternoon, I arose, and took my spade, and dug hard and fast. For I knew that in an hour the gentleman who had hired me to dig those garden beds would come home from town, and I had but that hour in which to make them look as though I had spent a whole day on them.