The arrangement of the beds on paper was not difficult, but to trace them on the natural sod was another matter. This could not be intrusted to a common workman; one, to whom the plan was shown, insisted upon mistaking the walks for beds, and even proposed some alterations, which he called improvements. Somehow, I never was very good at the practical part of a design. Moreover, the weather had been dry, for this point had been reached toward the close of one of the rainless terms that alternated with the floods of this particular season. The ground was hard, the sun was hot, and my experience with a shovel--spade my man called it--had been limited; but the difficulty had to be overcome, regardless of previous habits, and, grasping the shovel bravely, I set to work at once.
The centre bed was a circle, and, by driving a stake in the ground, and attaching to it a string, there was no difficulty in making a faint impression of the outline on the grass. This outline I deepened into a shallow furrow with my spade, although my arms and back ached, and my clothes were damp with perspiration before I had finished. The next figure, which was a star, was not so easy; and when it came to the worms, and the bays, and promontories, there bid fair to be far too little monotony. In fact, the figures would not take the shapes they assumed on paper, and the more they were worked at the worse they grew. If they were narrowed, they became immediately too long; if they were lengthened, they had to be widened; if one part was taken off, another portion immediately bulged out; bays were either too deep or too shallow, promontories either stretched entirely across the adjoining walk or disappeared utterly. The walks were continually being squeezed into a strait that would not by any possibility admit the passage of modern crinoline, or spread out into a sort of desert waste. The truth is, such vulgar trivialities as are implied in practical performance are not suited to the intellectual mind. After working the plan several weeks, nearly killing myself, and sadly confusing the man I had hired for this express matter, I concluded to let him finish it alone. It is a matter of pride, however, that, in spite of some sad blunders through his ignorance, it still bears palpable traces of the original design, and entirely avoids the fatal fault of monotony.