and how much prayers and songs and mentholatum helps them to have well feels.
And to some other potatoes I did talk about my friends—about the talks that William Shakespeare and I do have together; and about how Lars Porsena of Clusium does have a fondness for collecting things, and how he does hide them in the oak tree near unto the house we live in; and about Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the poetry in her tracks. And one I did tell about the new ribbon Aphrodite has to wear, and how she does have a fondness for chocolate creams. To the potato most near unto it I did tell of the little bell that Peter Paul Rubens does wear to cathedral service. To the one next to it I did tell how Louis II, le Grand Condé, is a mouse of gentle ways, and how he does have likings to ride in my sleeve.
And all the times I was picking up potatoes I did have conversations with them. Too, I did have thinks of all their growing days there in the ground, and all the things they did hear. Earth-voices are glad voices, and earth-songs come up from the ground through the plants; and in their flowering and in the days before these days are come, they do tell the earth-songs to the wind. And the wind in her goings does whisper them to folks to print for other folks. So other folks do have knowing of earth's songs. When I grow up I am going to write for children—and grown-ups that haven't grown up too much—all the earth-songs I now do hear.
