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MY SUMMER
IN A GARDEN.

BY

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.

BOSTON:

JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO:

LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.

1871.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870,
By FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

s

A. i; A ‘ WwW aA, PAL Te a

Hisy

Rand, Avery, & Frye, Stereowpers and Printers, Boston.

INTRODUCTORY LETTER.

M* DEAR MR. FIELDS, —I did prom-
ise to write an Introduction to these
charming papers; but an Introduction, —
what is it? —a sort of pilaster, put upon the ~
face of a building for look’s sake, and usually
flat, —very flat. Sometimes it may be called
a caryatid, which is, as I understand it, a cruel
device of architecture, representing a man or
a woman, obliged to hold up upon his or her
head or shoulders a structure which they did
not build, and which could stand just as well
without as with them. But an Introduction
is more apt to bea pillar, such as one may see
in Baalbec, standing up in the air all alone,
with nothing on it, and with nothing for it
to do.
But an Introductory Letter is different.

ili

iv INTRODUCTORY LETTER.

There is in that no formality, no assumption
of function, no awkward propriety or dignity
‘to be sustained. A letter at the opening of
a book may be only a footpath, leading the
curious to a favorable point of observation,
and then leaving.them to wander as they will.

Sluggards have been sent to the ant for
wisdom; but writers might better be sent to
the spider, — not because he works all. night,
and watches all day, but because he works
unconsciously. He dare not even bring his
work before his own eyes, but keeps it be-
hind him, as if too much knowledge of what
one is doing would spoil the delicacy and
modesty of one’s work. .

Almost all graceful and fanciful ae is
born like a dream, that comes noiselessly, and
tarries silently, and goes as a bubble bursts.
And yet somewhere work must. come te
real, well-considered work.

Inness (the best American painter of Na-.
ture in her moods of real human feeling)
once, said, “* No man can do any thing in art,
unless he has intuitions ; but, between whiles,

“INTRODUCTORY LETTER. v

one must work hard in cellecting the materials
out of which intuitions are made.” The
truth could not be hit off better. Knowl-
edge is the soil, and intuitions are the flowers
- which grow up out of it. The soil must be
well enriched and worked.

It is very plain, or will be to those who
read these papers, now gathered up into this
book, as into a chariot for a race, that the
author has long employed his eyes, his ears,
and his understanding, in observing and con-
sidering the facts of Nature, and in weaving
curious analogies. Being an editor of one
of the oldest daily newspapers in New
England, and obliged to fill its columns day
after day (as the village mill is obliged to
render every day so.many sacks of flour or
of meal to its hungry customers), it naturally
occurred to him, ** Why not write something
which I myself, as well as my readers, shall
enjoy? The: market gives them facts
enough ; politics, lies enough ; art, affecta-
tions enough ; criminal news, horrors enough ;

vi INTRODUCTORY LETTER.

fashion more than enough of vanity upon
vanity, aid vexation of purse. Why should
they not have some of those wandering and
joyous fancies which solace my hours ?”

The suggestion ripened into execution.
Men and women read, and wanted more.
These garden letters began to blossom every
week; and many hands were’ glad to gather
pleasure from them. A sign it was of wis-
dom. In our feverish days, it is a-sign of
health or of+convalescence that men love
gentle pleasure, and enjoyments that do not
rush or roar, but distil as the dew.

The love of rural life, the habit of finding
enjoyment in familiar things, that suscepti-
bility to Nature which keeps the nerve gently
thrilled in her homeliest nooks and by her
commonest sounds, is worth a thousand for-
tunes of money, or its equivalents.

Every book which interprets the secret lore
of fieids and gardens, every essay that brings
men nearer to the understanding of the mys-
teries which every tree whispers, every brook

INTRODUCTORY LETTER. eo VN

murmurs, every weed, even, hints, is a con-

tribution to the wealth and the happiness of
our kind. And if the lines of the writer

shall be traced in quaint characters, and be

filled with a grave humor, or break out at
times into merriment, all this will be no pre-

sumption against their wisdom or his good-

ness. Is the oak less strong and tough

because the mosses and weather-stains stick

in all manner of grotesque sketches along its

bark? Now, truly, one may not learn from

this little book either divinity or horticulture ;

but if he gets a pure happiness, and a ten-

dency to repeat the happiness from the sim-

ple stores of Nature, he will gain from our

friend’s garden what Adam lost in his, and

what neither philosophy nor divinity has

always been able to restore.

Wherefore, thanking you for listening to a
former letter, which begged you to consider
whether these curious and ingenious papers,
that go winding about like a half-trodden
path between the garden and the field, might

WA INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER«

r
_ not be Fiven in book-form to your million
eaders, ? remain, yours to command in

every thing but the writing of an Introduc-

tion,
: HENRY WARD BEECHER.

BY WAY OF DEDICATION.

5 Y DEAR POLLY, — When a few of

these papers had appeared in ‘The
“Courant,” I was encouraged to continue
them by hearing that they had at least one
reader who read them with the serious mind
from which alone profit is to be expected.
_It was a maiden lady, who, I am sure, was no
more to blame for her singleness than for her
age; and she looked to these honest sketches
of experience for that aid which the profes-
_ sional agricultural papers could not give in
the management of the little bit of garden
which she called her own. She may have
been my only disciple; and I confess that the
thought of her yielding a simple faith to—
what a gainsaying world may have regarded
with levity has contributed much to give an

ix

x BY WAY OF DEDICATION.

increased practical turn to my reports of
“what I know about gardening. The thought
that I had misled a lady, whose age is not
her only singularity, who looked to me for
advice which should be not at all the fanciful
product of the Garden of Gull, would give
me great pain. I trust that her autumn is a
peaceful one, and undisturbed by either the
humorous or the satirical side of Nature.
You know that this attempt to tell the
truth about one of the most fascinating occu-
pations in the world has not been without
its dangers. I have received anonymous
letters. Some of them were murderously
spelled; others were missives in such
elegant phrase and dress, that danger was
only to be apprehended in them by one
skilled in the mysteries of medizval poison-
ing, when death flew on the wings of a
perfume. One lady, whose entreaty that I
should pause had something of command in
it, wrote that my strictures on “ pusley ” had
so inflamed her husband’s zeal, that, in her
absence in the country, he had rooted up all

*

BY WAY OF DEDICATION. xi

her beds of portulaca (a sort of cousin of the
fat weed), and utterly cast it out. It is,”
however, to be expected, that retributive
justice would visit the innocent as well as
the guilty of an offending family. This is
only another proof of the wide sweep of
moral forces. I suppose that it is as neces-
sary in the vegetable world as it is elsewhere
to avoid the appearance of evil.

In offering you the fruit of my garden,
which has been gathered from week to week,
without much reference to the progress of
the ‘crops or the drought, I desire to
acknowledge an influence which has lent half
the charm to my labor. If I were in a court
of justice, or injustice, under oath, I should
not like to say, that either in the wooing days
of spring, or under the suns of the summer
solstice, you had been, either with hoe, rake,
or miniature spade, of the least use in the
earden ; but your suggestions have been in-
valuable, and, whenever used, have been paid
for. Your horticultural inquiries have been
of a nature to astonish the vegetable world,

Xll BY WAY OF DEDICATION.

if it listened, and were a constant inspiration
to research. There was almost nothing that
you did not wish to know; and this, added to
what I wished to know, made a boundless
field for discovery. What might have be-
come of the garden if your advice had been
followed, a good Providence only knows; but
I never worked there without a consciousness
that you might at any moment come down
the walk, under the grape-arbor, bestowing
elances of approval, that were none the

worse for not being critical; exercising a

sort of superintendence that elevated gar-
dening into a fine art; expressing a wonder
that was as complimentary to me as it was to
Nature ; bringing an atmosphere which made
the garden a region of romance, the soil of
which was set apart for fruits native to climes
unseen. It was this bright presence that
filled the garden, as it did the summer, with
lizht, and now leaves upon it that tender
play of color and bloom which is called
among the Alps the afterglow. - c. D. W.

Noox Farm, Harrrorp, October, 1870.

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

PRELIMINARY.

ae love of dirt is among the earliest

of passions, as it is the latest. Mud-
pies gratify one of our first and best in-
stincts. So long as we are dirty, we are
pure. Fondness for the ground comes
back to a man after he has run the
round of pleasure and business, eaten
dirt, and sown wild-oats, drifted about
the world, and taken the wind of all its
moods. The love of digging in the
ground (or of looking on while he pays
another to dig) is as sure to come back

to him, as he is sure, at last, to go under
1

ge MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

the ground, and stay there. To own a
bit of ground, td scratch it with a hoe,
to plant seeds, and watch their renewal
of life, —this is the commonest delight
of the race, the most satisfactory thing a
man can do. When Cicero writes of the
pleasures of old age, that of agriculture
is chief among them: “ Venio nunc ad
voluptates agricolarum, quibus eyo in-
credibiliter delector: que nec ulla w-
pediunter senectute, et mihi ad saprentis
vitam proxime videntur accedere.” (I
am driven to Latin because New-York
editors have exhausted the English lan-
guage in the praising of spring, and es-
pecially of the month of May.)

Let us celebrate the soil. Most men
toil that they. may own a piece of it;
they measure their success in life by their
ability to buy it. It is alike the passion
of the parvenu and the pride of the
aristocrat. Broad acres are a patent of

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 3

nobility ; and no man but feels more of a
man in the world if he have a bit of
ground that he can call his own. How-
ever small it is on the surface, it is four
thousand miles deep; and that is a very
handsome property. And there is a
great pleasure in working im the soil,
apart from the ownership of it. The
man who has planted a garden feels that
he has done something for the ggod of
the world. He belongs to the produ-
_cers. It is a pleasure to eat of the fruit
of one’s toil, if it be nothing more than
a head of lettuce or an ear of corn.
One cultivates a lawn even with great
satisfaction; for there is nothing more
beautiful than grass and turf in our lati-
tude. The tropics may have their de-
lights; but they have not turf: and the
world without turf is a dreary desert.
The original garden of Eden could not
have had such turf as one sees in Eng-

4 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

land. The Teutonic races all love turf:
they emigrate in the line of its erowth.

To dig in the mellow soil—to dig
moderately, for all pleasure should be
taken sparingly —is a great thing. One
gets strength out of the ground as often
as one really touches it with a hoe.
Antzeus (this is a classical article) was no
doubt an agriculturist ; and such a prize-
fighter as Hercules couldn’t do any thing
with him till he got him to lay down his
spade, and quit the soil. It is not simply
beets and potatoes and corn and string-
beans that one raises in his well-hoed
garden: it is the average of human life.
There is life in the ground; it goes into
the seeds; and it also, when it is stirred
up, goes into the man who stirs it. The
hot sun on his back as he bends to
his shovel and hoe, or contemplatively
rakes the warm and fragrant loam, is
better than much medicine. The buds

or

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

are coming out on the bushes round
about; the blossoms of the fruit-trees be-
gin to show; the blood is running up the
grape-vines in streams; you can smell
the wild-flowers on the near bank; and
the birds are flymg and glancing and
singing everywhere. To the open kitch-
en-door comes the busy housewife to
shake a white something, and stands a
moment to look, quite transfixed by the
delichtful sights and sounds. Hoeing in
the garden on a bright, soft May day, ~
when you are not obliged to, is nearly
equal to the delight of going trouting.
Blessed be agriculture! if one does not
have too much of it. All literature is
fragrant with it, in a gentlemanly way.
At the foot of the charming olive-covered
hills of Tivoli, Horace (not he of Chap-
paqua) had-a sunny farm: it was in
sight of Hadrian’s villa, who did land-
scape-gardening on an extensive scale,

6 MY SUMMER. IN A GARDEN.

and probably did not get half as much
comfort out of it as Horace did from his
_ more simply-tilled acres. We trust that
Horace did a little hoemg and farming
himself, and that his verse is not all fraud-
ulent, sentiment. In order to enjoy
agriculture, you do not want too much
of it, and you want to be poor enough
to have a little inducement to work mod-
erately yourself. Hoe while it is spring,
and enjoy the best anticipations. It is
not much matter if things do not turn
out well.

MY SUMMER IN A.GARDEN. Sey!

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING.

FIRST WEEK.

NDER this modest title, I purpose

to write a series of papers, some of
which will be like many papers of gar-
den-seeds, with nothing vital in them, on
the subject of gardening; holding that
no man has any right to keep valuable
knowledge to himself, and hoping that
those who come after me, except tax-
gatherers and that sort of person, will
find profit in the perusal of my experi-
ence. As my knowledge is constantly
increasing, there is likely to be no end
to these papers. They will pursue no
orderly system of agriculture or horti-
culture, but range from topic: to .topic,

8 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

according to the weather and the prog:
ress of the weeds, which may drive me
from one corner of the garden to the
other.

The principal value of a private gar-
den is not understood. It is not to give
the possessor vegetables and fruit (that
can be better and cheaper done by the
market-gardeners), but to teach him pa-
tience and philosophy, and the higher vir-
tues, — hope deferred, and expectations
blighted, leading directly to resignation,
and sometimes to alienation. The gar-
den thus becomes a moral agent, a test
of character, as it was in the beginning.
I shall keep this central truth in mind
in these. articles. I mean to have a
moral garden, if it is not a productive
one,— one that shall teach, O my
brothers! O my sisters! the great les-
sons of life.

‘The first pleasant thing about a gar-

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 9

den in this latitude is, that you never
know when to set it going. If you want
any thing to come to maturity early,
you must start itin a hot-house. If you
put it out early, the chances are all in
favor of getting it nipped with frost ; for
the thermometer will be 90° one day,
and go below 32° the night of the day
following. And, if you do not set out
plants or sow seeds early, you fret con-
tinually ; knowing that your vegetables
will be late, and that, while Jones has
early peas, you will be watching your
slow-forming pods. This keeps you in a
state of mind. When you have planted
any thing early, you are doubtful whether
to desire to see it above ground, or not.
If a hot day comes, you long to see the
young plants; but, when a cold north
wind brings frost, you tremble lest the
seeds have burst their bands. Your
spring is passed in anxious doubts and

10 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

fears, which are usually realized; and so
a great moral discipline is worked out
for you. |
Now, there is my corn, two or three
inches high this 18th of May, and ap-
parently having no fear of a frost. I
was hoeing it this morning for the first
time, — it is not well usually to hoe corn
until about the 18th of May, —when
Polly came out to look at the Lima
beans. She seemed to think the poles |
had come up beautifully. I thought
they did look well: they are a fine set
of poles, large and well grown, and stand
straight. They were inexpensive too.
The cheapness came about from my cut-
ing them on another man’s land, and he
did not know it. I have not examined
this transaction in the moral light of
gardening; but I know people in this
country take great liberties at the, polls.
Polly noticed that the beans had not

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 11

themselves come up in any proper sense,
but that the dirt had got off from them,
leaving them uncovered. She thought
it would be well to sprinkle a slight layer
of dirt over them;.and I, indulgently,
consented. It occurred to me, when she
had gone, that beans always come up
that way, — wrong end first; and that
what they wanted was light, and not
dirt.

Observation : Woman always did, from
the first, make a muss in a garden.

I inherited with my garden a large
patch of raspberries. Splendid berry
the raspberry, when the strawberry has
gone. ‘This patch has grown into such a
defiant attitude, that you could not get
within several feet of it. Its stalks were
enormous in size, and cast out long,
prickly arms in all directions; but the
bushes were pretty much all dead. I
have walked into them a good deal with

12 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

a pruning-knife ; but it is very much like
fighting original sin. The variety is one
that I can recommend. I think it is called
Brinckley’s Orange. It is exceedingly
prolific, and has enormous stalks. The
fruit is also said to be good; but that
does not matter so much, as the plant
does not often bear in this region. The
stalks seem to be biennial institutions ;
and as they get about their growth one
year, and bear the next year, and then
die, and the winters here nearly always
kill them, unless you take them into the
house (which is inconvenient if you have
a family of small children), it is very dif-
ficult to induce the plant to flower and
fruit. This is the greatest objection
there is to this sort of raspberry. I.
think of keeping these for discipline, and
setting out some others, more hardy
sorts, for fruit.

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 1S

SECOND WEEK.

EXT to deciding when to start
your garden, the most important
matter is, what to put im it. It is dif_i-
cult to decide what to order for dinner
on a given day: how much more op-
pressive is it to order in a lump an end-
less vista of dinners, so to speak! For,
unless your garden is a boundless prairie
(and mine seems to me to be that when
I hoe it on hot days), you must make a
selection, from the great variety of vege-
tables, of those you will raise in it; and
.you feel rather bound to supply your
own table from your own garden, and to
eat only as you have sown.
I hold that no man has a right (what-
ever his sex, of course) to have a gar-

14 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

den to his own selfish uses. He ought
not to please himself, but every man to
please his neighbor. I tried to havea
garden that would give general moral
satisfaction. It seemed to me that no-
body could object to potatoes (a most
useful vegetable); and I began to plant
them freely. But there was a chorus of
protest against them. “You don’t want
to take up your ground with potatoes,”
the neighbors said: “‘ you can buy pota-
toes”’ (the very thing I wanted to avoid
doing is buying things). “What you
want is the perishable things that you
cannot get fresh m the market.” —“ But
what kind of perishable things?” A hor-
ticulturalist of emimence wanted me to
sow lines of strawberries and raspberries —
right over where I had put my potatoes
in drills: I had about five hundred straw-
berry- plants in another part of my gar-
.den; but this fruit-fanatic wanted me to

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 15

turn my whole patch into vines and run-
ners. [suppose I could raise strawber-
ries enough for all my neighbors; and
perhaps I ought to do it. I had a little
space prepared for melons, —musk-mel-
ous,-—-which I showed to an experienced
friend. “You are not going to waste
your ground on musk-melons?”’ he asked.
“They rarely ripen in this climate thor-
oughly, before frost.” He had tried for
years without luck. I resolved to not go
into such a foolish experiment. But, the
next day, another neighbor happened in.
“Ah! I see you are going to have mel-
ons. My family would rather give up
any thing else in the garden than musk-
melons,—of the nutmeg variety. They
are the most grateful things we have on
the table.” So theré it was. There was
no compromise: it was melons, or no
melons, and somebody offended in any
case. I half resolved to plant them a

16 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

little late, so that they would, and they
wouldn’t. But I had the same difficulty
about string-beans (which I detest), and
squash (which I tolerate), and parsnips,
and the whole round of green things.

I have pretty much come to the con-
clusion, that you have got to put your
foot down in gardening. If I had actu-
ally taken counsel of my friends, I should
not have had a thing growing in the
garden to-day but weeds. And besides,
while you are waiting, Nature does not
wait. Her mind is made up. She
knows just what she will raise; and she
has an infinite variety of early and late.
The most humiliating thing to me about
a garden is the lesson it teaches of the
. inferiority of man. Nature is prompt,
decided, inexhaustible. She thrusts up
her plants with a vigor and freedom that
I admire; and, the more worthless the
plant, the more rapid and splendid its

\

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. gO

erowth. She is at it early and late, and
all night; never tiring, nor showing the
least sign of exhaustion.

“Hternal gardening is the price of
liberty,” is a motto that I should put
over the gateway of my garden, if I
had a gate. And yet it is not wholly
true; for there is no liberty in gar-
dening. The man who undertakes a
garden is relentlessly pursued. He
felicitates himself, that, when he gets it
once planted, he will have a season of
rest and of enjoyment in the sprouting
and growing of his seeds. It is a green
anticipation. He has planted a. seed
that will keep him awake nights; drive
rest from his bones, and sleep from his
pillow. Hardly is the garden planted,
when he must begin to hoe it. The
weeds have sprung up all over it in
a night. They shine and wave in

redundant life. The docks have almost
2

18 MY SUMMER IN A “YARDEN.

gone to seed; and their roots go deeper
than conscience. Talk about the Lon-
don Docks !—the roots of these are like
the sources of the Aryan race. And
the weeds are not all. I awake in the
morning (and a thrivg garden will
wake a person up two hours before he
ought to be out of bed), and think of
the tomato-plants,— the leaves like fine
lace-work, owing to black bugs that skip
around, and can’t be caught. Some-
body ought to get up before the dew
is off, (why don’t the dew stay on till
after a reasonable breakfast?) and
sprinkle soot on the leaves. I wonder
if it is I. Soot is so much blacker than
the bugs, that they are disgusted, and
go away. You can’t get up too early,
if you have a garden. You must be
early due yourself, if you get ahead
of the bugs. I think, that, on the
whole, it would be best to sit up all

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 19

‘night, and sleep day-times. Things
appear to go on in the night in the
garden uncommonly. It would be less
trouble to stay up than it is to get up
so early.

I have been setting out some new

raspberries, two sorts,—a silver and a

gold color. -How fine they will look on
the table next year in a cut-glass dish,
the cream being in a ditto pitcher! I
set them four and five feet apart. I set
_my strawberries pretty well apart also.
The reason is, to give room for the cows
to run through when they break into
the garden,—as they do sometimes. <A
cow needs a broader track than a loco-
motive; and she generally. makes one.
I am sometimes astonished to see how
big a space in a flower-bed her foot will
cover. ‘The raspberries are called Doo-
little and Golden Cap. I don’t like the
name of the first variety, and, if they

20 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

do much, shall change it to Silver Top.
You never can tell what a thing named
Doolittle will do. ‘The one in the
Senate changed color, and got sour.
They ripen badly, —either mildew, or
rot on the bush. They are apt to John-
sonize, — rot on the stem. I shall watch
the Doolittles. Bae:

=

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 21

THIRD WEEK.

BELIEVE that I have found, if not

original sin, at least vegetable total
depravity in my garden; and it was
there before I went into it. It is the
bunch, or joint, or snake-grass, — what-
ever it is called. As Ido not know the
names of all the weeds and plants, I
have to do as Adam did in his garden, —
name things as I find them. This grass
has a slender, beautiful stalk: and when
you cut it down, or pull up a long root
of it, you fancy it is got rid of; but, in
a day or two, it will come up in the same
spot in half a dozen vigorous blades.
Cutting down and pulling up is what
it thrives on. Extermination rather
helps it. If you follow a slender white

22 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

root, it will be found to run under the’
ground until it meets another slender
white root; and you will soon unearth
a network of them, with a knot some-
where, sending out dozens of sharp-
pointed, healthy shoots, every joint
prepared to be an independent life and
plant. The only way to deal with it
is to take one part hoe and two parts
fingers, and- carefully dig it out, not
leaving a joint anywhere. It will take
a little- time, say all summer, to dig
out thoroughly a small patch; but if
you once dig it out, and keep it out,
you will have no further trouble.

I have said it was total depravity.
Here it is. If you attempt to pull up
and root out any sin in you, which
shows on the surface, —if it does not
show, you do not care for it,— you may
have noticed how it runs into an interior
network of sins, and an ever-sprouting

MY.SUMMER IN A GALDEN. 20

branch of them roots somewhere; and
that you cannot pull out one without
making a general internal disturbance,
and rooting up your whole being. I
suppose it is less trouble to quietly cut
them off at the top, —say once a week,
on Sunday, when you put on your

religious clothes and face,—so that no
one will see them, and not try to eradi-
cate the network within.

Remark.— This moral vegetable figure
is at the service of any clergyman who
will have the manliness to come forward
and help me at a day’s hoelhg on my
potatoes. None but the orthodox need
apply.

I, however, believe in the intellectual,
if not the moral, qualities of vegetables,
and especially weeds. There was a
worthless vine that (or who) started .up
about midway between a grape-trellis
and a row of bean-poles, some three

24 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

feet from each, but a little nearer the
trellis. When it came out of the ground,
it looked around to see what it should
- do. The trellis was already occupied.
The bean-pole was empty: There was
evidently a little the best’ chance of
light, air, and sole proprietorship on the
pole. And the vine started for the
pole, and began to climb it with deter-
mination. Here was as distinct an act
of choice, of reason, as a boy exercises
when-he goes into a forest, and, looking
about, decides which tree he will climb.
And, besides, how did the vine know
enough to travel in exactly the right
direction, three feet, to find what it
wanted? This is intellect. The weeds,
on the other hand, have hateful moral
qualities. To ‘cut down a weed is,
therefore, to do a moral action. I feel
as if I were destroying sin. My hoe
becomes an instrument of retributive

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 25

justice. J am an apostle of Nature.
This view of the matter lends a dignity
to the art of hoeing which nothing else
does, and lifts it mto the region of
ethics. Hoeing becomes, not a pastime,
but a duty. And you get to regard it
so, as the days and the weeds lengthen.

Observation.— Nevertheless, what a
man needs in gardening is a cast-iron
back, with a hinge in it.. The hoe is.
an ingenious instrument, calculated to
call out a great deal of strength at a
great disadvantage.

The striped bug has come, the saddest
of the year. He is a moral double-
ender, iron-clad at that. He is un-
pleasant in two ways. He burrows in
the ground so that you cannot find
him, and-he flies away so that you
cannot catch him. He is rather hand-
some, as bugs go, but utterly dastardly,
in that he gnaws the stem of the plant

26 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

close to the ground, and ruins it without
any apparent advantage to himself. I
find him on the hills of cucumbers
(perhaps it will be a cholera-year, and
we shall not want any), the squashes
(small loss), and the’ melons (which
never ripen). The best way to deal
with the striped bug is to sit down by.
the hills, and patiently watch for him. ~
If you are spry, you can annoy him.
This, however, takes time. It takes
all day.and part of the night. For he
flyeth in darkness, and wasteth at noon-
Jay. If you get up before the dew is
off the plants,— it goes off very early,—
you can sprinkle soot on the plant
(soot is my panacea: if I can get the
disease of a plant reduced to the neces-
sity of soot, I am all right); and soot
is unpleasant to the bug. But the best
thing to do is to set a toad to catch
the bugs. The toad at once establishes

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 27

the most intimate relations with the
bug. It isa pleasure to see such unity
among the lower animals. The difh-
culty is to make the toad stay, and
watch the hill. If you know your toad,
it is all right. If you do not, you.must
build a tight fence round the plants,
which the toad cannot jump over. ‘This,
_ however, introduces a new element. I
find that I have a zodlogical garden on
my hands. It is an unexpected result
of my little enterprise, which never
aspired to the completeness of the Paris
“ Jardin des Plantes.”’

28 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

FOURTH WEEK.

RTHODOXY is at alow ebb. Only

two clergymen accepted my offer
to come and help hoe my potatoes for
the privilege of using my vegetable
total-depravity figure about the snake-
grass, or quack-grass as some call it;
and those two did not bring hoes.
There seems to be a lack of disposition
to hoe among our educated clergy. I
am bound to say that these two, how-
ever, sat and watched my vigorous com-
bats with the weeds, and talked most
beautifully about the application of the
snake-grass figure. As, for instance,
when a fault or sin showed on the surface

of a man, whether if you dug down, you
would find that it ran back and into the

Ba

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 29

original organic bunch of original sin
within the man. The only other clergy-
man who came was from out of town,—a
half Universalist, who said he wouldn’t
give twenty cents for my figure. He
said that the snake-grass was not in my
garden originally, that it sneaked in
under the sod, and that it could be en-
tirely rooted out with industry and pa-
tience. Iasked the Universalist-inclined
man to take my hoe and try it; but he
said he hadn’t time, and went away.
But, jubilate, I have got my garden
all hoed the first time! I feel as if I
had put down the rebellion. -Only there
are guerillas left here and there, about
the borders and in corners, unsub-
dued, — Forrest docks, and. Quantrell
grass, and Beauregard pig-weeds. This
first hoeing is a gigantic task: it Is
your first trial of strength with the
never-sleeping forces of Nature. Sev-

30 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

eral times, in its progress, I was tempted
to do as Adam did, who abandoned his
garden on account of the weeds. (How
much my mind seems to run upon
Adam, as if there had been only
two really moral gardens, — Adam’s and
mine!) ‘The only drawback to my re-
joicing over the finishing of the first
hoeing is, that the garden now wants
hoeing the second time. I suppose, if
my garden were planted in a perfect
circle, and I started round it with a
hoe, I should never see an opportunity
to rest. The fact is, that gardening is
the old fable of perpetual labor; and
I, for one, can never forgive Adam Sisy-
phus, or whoever it was, who let in the
roots of discord. I had pictured my-
self sitting at eve, with my family, in
the shade of twilight, contemplating a
garden hoed. Alas! itis a dream not to
be realized in this world.

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 31

My mind has been turned to the sub-
ject of fruit and shade trees in a gar-
den. There are those who say that
trees shade the garden too much, and
interfere with the growth of the vege-
tables. There may be something in this:
but when I go down the potato rows, the
rays of the sun glancing upon my shining
blade, the sweat pouring from my face,
I should be grateful for shade. What is
a garden for? The pleasure of man. I
should take much more pleasure in a
shady garden. Am I to be sacrificed,
broiled, roasted, for the sake of the in-
creased vigor of a few vegetables? The
thing is perfectly absurd. If I were
rich, I think I would have my garden
covered with an awning, so that it
would be comfortable to work in it. It
might roll up and be removable, as the
great awning of the Roman. Coliseum
-was, —not like the Boston one, which

32 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

went off in a high wind. Another very
good way to do, and probably not so ex-
pensive as the awning, would be to have
four persons of foreign birth carry a
sort of canopy over you as you hoed.
And there might be a person at each
end of the row with some cool and re-
freshing drink. Agriculture is still in a
very barbarous stage. I hope to live
yet to see the day when I can do my
gardening, as tragedy is done, to slow
and soothing music, and attended by
some of the comforts I have named.
These things come so forcibly into my
mind sometimes as I work, that perhaps,
when a wandering breeze lifts my straw
hat, or a bird lights on a near currant-
bush, and shakes out a _ full-throated
summer song, I almost expect to find
the cooling drink and the hospitable en-
tertainment at the end of the row. But
I never do. There is nothing to be

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 33

done but to turn round, and hoe back
to the other end.

Speaking of those yellow squash-
bugs, I think I disheartened them by
covering the plants so deep with soot
and wood-ashes that they could not find
them; and I am in doubt if I shall ever
see the plants again. But I have heard
of another defence against the bugs.
Put a fine wire-screen over each hill,
which will keep out the bugs and admit
the rain. I should say that these
screens would not cost much more than
the melons you would be likely to get
from the vines if. you bought them;
but then think of the moral satisfaction
of watching the bugs hovering over the
screen, seeing, but unable to reach the
tender plants within. That is worth
paying for.

I left my own garden yesterday, and
went over to where Polly was getting

8

34 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

the weeds out of one of her flower-
beds. She was working away at the
bed with a little hoe. Whether women
ought to have the ballot or not (and I
have a decided opinion on that point,
which I should here plainly give, did I
not fear that it would injure my agricul-
tural influence), I am compelled to say
that this was rather helpless hoeing.
It was patient, conscientious, even
pathetic hoemg; but it was neither
effective nor finished. When com-
pleted, the bed looked somewhat as if
a hen had scratched it: there was that
touching unevenness about it. I think
no one could look at it and not be
affected. To be sure, Polly smoothed it
off with a rake, and asked me if it
wasn’t nice; and I said it was. It was
not a favorable time for me to explain
the difference between puttering hoe-
ing, and the broad, free sweep of the

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 35

instrument, which kills the weeds,
spares the plants, and loosens the soil
without leaving it in holes and hills.
But, after all, as life is constituted, I
think more of Polly’s honest and
anxious care of her plants than of the
most finished gardening in the world.

36 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

FIFTH WEEK.

LEFT my garden for a week, just at
the close of the dry spell. A
~ season of rain immediately set im, and
when I returned the transformation was
wonderful. In one week, every vegeta-
ble had fairly jumped forward. The
tomatoes which I left slender plants,
eaten of bugs and debating whether
they would go backward~ or forward,
had become stout and lusty, with thick
stems and dark leaves, and some of
them had blossomed. The corn waved
like that which grows so rank out of
the French-English mixture at Water-
loo. The squashes—TI will not speak
of the squashes. The most remarkable
growth was the asparagus. There was

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 37

not a spear above ground when I went
away; and now it had sprung up, and
gone to seed, and there were stalks.
higher than my head. I am entirely
aware of the value of words, and of
moral obligations. When I say that
the asparagus had grown six feet in
seven days, I expect and wish to be
believed. Iam a little particular about
the statement ; for, if there is any prize
offered for asparagus at the next agri-
cultural fair, I wish to compete, — speed
to govern. What I claim is the fastest
asparagus. As for eating purposes, I
have seen better. A neighbor of mine,
who looked in at the growth of the
bed, said, “ Well, he’d be i, puted
told him there was no use of affirming
now; he might keep his oath till I
wanted it on the asparagus affidavit.

In order to have this. sort of asparagus,
you want to manure heavily in the

38 MY SUMMER. IN A GARDEN.

early spring, fork it in, and top-dress
(that sounds technical) with a thick
layer of chloride of sodium: if you
cannot get that, common salt will do,
and the neighbors will never notice
whether it is the orthodox Na. Cl. 58.5,
or. not.

I scarcely dare trust myself to speak
of the weeds. They grow as if the devil
was inthem. I know a lady, a member
of the church, and a very good sort
of woman, considermg the subject
condition of that class, who says that
the weeds work on her to that extent,
that, in gomg through her garden, she
has the greatest difficulty in keeping
the ten commandments in any thing like
an unfractured condition. I asked her
which one? but she said, all of them:
one felt like breaking the whole lot.
The sort of weed which I most hate
_ (if I can be said to hate any thing which

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. o9

erows in my own garden) is the “ pus-
ley,” a fat, ground-clinging, spreading,
greasy thing, and the most propagatious
(it is not my fault if the word is not
in the dictionary) plant I know. I saw
a Chinaman, who came over with a
returned missionary, and pretended to
be converted, boil a lot of it in a pot,
stir in eggs, and mix and eat it with
relish,—“‘ Me likee he.” It will be a
good thing to keep the Chinamen on
when they come to do our gardening.
I only fear they will cultivate it at the
expense of the strawberries and melons.
Who can say that other weeds, which
we despise, may not be the favorite
food of some remote people or tribe.
We ought to abate our conceit. It is
possible that we destroy in our gardens
‘that which is really of most value’ in
some other place. Perhaps, in like
manner, our faults and vices are virtues

40) MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

in some remote planet. I cannot see,
however, that this thought is of the
slightest value to us here, any more than
weeds are.

There is another subject which is
forced upon my notice. I like neigh-
bors, and I like chickens; but I do not
think they ought to be united near a
garden. Neighbors’ hens in your gar-
den are an annoyance. Even if they
did not scratch up the corn, and peck
the strawberries, and eat the tomatoes,
it is not pleasant to see them straddling
about in their jerkey, high-stepping,
speculative manner, picking inquisitively
here and there. It is of no use to tell
the neighbor that his hens eat your
tomatoes: it makes no impression on
him, for the tomatoes are not his. The
best way is to casually remark to him
that he has a fine lot of chickens, pretty
well grown, and that you like spring

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 41

chickens broiled. He will take them
away at once. The neighbors’ small
children are also out of place in your
garden, in strawberry and currant time.
I hope I appreciate the value of children.
We should soon come to nothing without
them, though the Shakers have the best

gardens in the world. Without them
the common school would languish.
But the problem is, what to do with
them in a garden. For they are not
good to eat, and there is a law against
making away with them. The law is
not very well enforced, it is true; for
people do thin them out with constant
dosing, paregoric, and soothing-sirups,
and scanty clothing. But I, for one,
feel that it would not be right, aside
from the law, to take the life, even of
the smallest child, for the sake of a
little fruit, more or less, in the garden.
I may be wrong; but these are my

42 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

sentiments, and I am not ashamed of
them. When we come, as Bryant says
in his “ Iliad,” to leave the circus of this
life, and join that innumerable caravan
which moves, it will be some satis-
faction to us, that we have never, in
the- way of gardening, disposed of even
the humblest child unnecessarily. My
plan would be to put them into Sunday
schools more thoroughly, and to give
the Sunday schools an agricultural turn ;
teaching the children the sacredness
of neighbors’ vegetables. I think that
our Sunday schools do not sufficiently
impress upon children the danger, from
snakes and otherwise, of going into the
neighbors’ gardens.

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 43

SIXTH WEEK.

OMEBODY has sent me a new sort

of hoe, with the wish that I should
speak favorably of it, if I can consist-
ently. I willingly do so, but with the
understanding that I am to be at lberty
to speak just as courteously of any other
hoe which I may receive. If I under-
stand religious morals, this is the position
of the religious press with regard
to bitters and wringing-machines. In
some cases, the responsibility of such
a recommendation is shifted upon the
wife of the editor or clergyman. Polly
says she is entirely willing to make a |
certificate, accompanied with an affidavit,
with regard to this hoe; but her habit
of sitting about the garden-walk, on

e

44 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

an inverted flower-pot, while I hoe, some-_
‘what destroys the practical value of her
testimony. 3
As to this hoe, Ido not mind saying
that it has changed my view of the
desirableness and value of human life.
It has, in fact, made life a holiday to
me. It is made on the principle that
man is an upright, sensible, reasonable
being, and not a grovelling wretch. It
does away with the necessity of the
hinge in the back. The handle is seven
and a half feet long. There are two
narrow blades, sharp on both edges,
which come together at an obtuse angle
in front; and as you walk along with
this hoe before you, pushing and pulling
with a gentle motion, the weeds fall
at every thrust and withdrawal, and
the slaughter is immediate and wide-
spread. When I got this hoe, I was
troubled with sleepless mornings, pains

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 45

in the back, kleptomania with regard to
new weeders; when I went into my
garden, I was always sure to see some-
thing. In this disordered state of mind
and body, I got this hoe. The morning
after a day of using it, I slept perfectly
and late. I regained my respect for
the eighth commandment. After two
doses of the hoe in the garden, the
weeds entirely disappeared. Trying it
a third morning, I was obliged to throw
it over the fence in order to save from
destruction the green things that ought
to grow in the garden. Of course, this
is figurative language. What I mean is,
that the fascination of using this hoe
is such, that you are sorely tempted
to employ it upon your vegetables, after
the weeds are laid low, and must hastily
withdraw it, to avoid unpleasant results.
TI make this explanation, because I in-
tend to put nothing into these agricul-

46 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

tural papers that will not bear the
strictest scientific investigation ; nothing
that the youngest child cannot under-
stand and cry for; nothing that the
oldest and wisest men will not need to
study with care.

I need not add, that the care of a gar-
den with this hoe becomes the merest
pastime. I would not be without one
for a single night. The only danger is,
that you may rather make an idol of the
hoe, and somewhat neglect your garden
in explaining it, and fooling about with
it. I almost think, that, with one of
these in the hands of an ordinary day-
laborer, you might see at night where
he had been working.

Let us have peas. I have been a
zealous advocate of the birds. I have
rejoiced in their multiplication. I have
endured their concerts at four o’clock in
the morning without a murmur. Let

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 47

them come, I said, and eat the wornis,
in order that we, later, may enjoy the
foliage and the fruits of the earth. We
have a cat, a magnificent animal, of the
sex which votes (but. not a pole-cat), —
so large and powerful, that, if he were in
the army, he would be called Long Tom.
He is a cat of fine disposition, the most
irreproachable morals I ever saw thrown
away In a cat, and a splendid hunter.
He spends his nights, not in social dissi-
pation, but in gathering in rats, mice,
flying-squirrels, and also birds. When
he first brought me a bird, I told him
that it was wrong, and tried to convince
him, while he was eating it, that he was
doing wrong; for he is a reasonable
cat, and understands pretty much every
thing except the binomial theorem and
the time down the cycloidal arc. But
with no effect. The killing of birds
went on to my great regret and shame.

48 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

The other day, 1 went to my garden
to get a mess of peas. I had seen, the
day before, that they were just ready to
pick. How I had lined the ground,
planted, hoed, bushed them! The
bushes were very fine, —seven feet high,
and of good wood. How I had delight-
ed in the growing, the blowing, the
podding! What a touching thought it
was that they had all podded for me!
When I went to pick them, I found the
pods all split open, and the peas gone.
The dear little birds, who are so fond
of the strawberries, had eaten them
all. Perhaps there were left as many as
I planted: I did not count them. I
made a rapid estimate of the cost of
the seed, the interest of the ground,
the price of labor, the value of the
bushes, the anxiety of weeks of watch-
fulness. J looked about me on the face
of Nature. The wind blew from the

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 49

south so soft and treacherous! A thrush
sang in the woods so deceitfully! All
Nature seemed fair. But who was to
give me back my peas? The fowls of
the air have peas; but what has man ?
I went into the house. I called Cal-
vin. (That is the name of our cat,
given him on account of his gravity,
morality, and. uprightness. We never
familiarly call him John.) I petted
Calvin. I lavished upon him an enthu-
siastic fondness. I told him that he
had no fault; that the one action that:
I had called a vice was an heroic exhi-
bition of regard for my interests. I
bade him go and do likewise con-
tinually. I now saw how much better
instinct is than mere unguided reason.
Calvin knew. If he had put his opinion
into English (instead of his native cat-
alogue), it would have been: “ You
need not teach your grandmother to
4

50 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

suck eggs.” It was only the round of
Nature. The worms eat a noxious
something in the ground. The birds
eat the worms. Calvin eats the birds.
“We eat—no, we do not eat Calvin..
There the cham stops. When you
ascend the scale of being, and come to
an animal that is, like ourselves, inedi-
ble, you have arrived at a result where
-you can rest. Let us respect the cat.
He completes an edible chain.

I have little heart to discuss methods
of raising peas. It occurs to me that I
can have an iron pea-bush, a sort of
trellis, through which I could discharge
electricity at frequent intervals, and
electrify the birds to death when they
alicht ; for they stand upon my beau-
tiful brush in order to pick out the peas.
An apparatus of this kind, with an
operator, would cost, however, about as
much as the peas. A neighbor suggests,

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 51

that I might put up a scarecrow near the
vines, which would keep the birds away.
I am doubtful about it: the birds are
too much accustomed to seeing a person
. In poor clothes in the garden to care
much for that. Another neighbor
suggests, that the birds do not open
the pods; that a sort of blast, apt to
come after rain, splits the pods, and the
birds then eat the peas. It may be so.
There seems to be complete unity of
action between the blast and the birds.
But good neighbors, kind friends, I
desire that you will not increase, by
talk, a disappointment which you cannot
assuage.

52 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

SEVENTH WEEK.

GARDEN is afi awful responsibil-

ity. You never know what you
may be aiding to grow init. I heard a
sermon, not long ago, i which the
preacher said that the Christian, at the
moment of his becoming one, was as
perfect a Christian as he would be if he
grew to be.an archangel; that is, that
he would not change thereafter at all,
but only develop. I do not know
whether this is good theology, or not;
and I‘hesitate to support it by an illus-
tration from my garden,-especially as I
do not want to run the risk of propa-
gating error, and Ido not care to give
away these theological comparisons to ~
clergymen who make me so little return

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 5

OO

in the way of labor. But I find, in dis:
secting a pea-blossom, that hidden in the
centre of it isa perfect miniature pea-
pod, with the peas all in it, —as perfect
a pea-pod as it will ever be; only it is
as tiny as a chatelaine ornament. Maize
and some other things show the same
precocity. This confirmation of the
theologic theory is startling, and sets
me meditating upon the moral possibill-
ties of my garden. I may find in it yet
the cosmic egg.

And, speaking of moral things, I am
half determined to petition the Cicu-
menical Council to issue a bull of ex-
communication against “pusley.” Of
all the forms which “error” has taken
in this world, I think that is about the
worst. In the middle ages, the monks
in St. Bernard’s ascetic community at
Clairvaux excommunicated a vineyard
which a less rigid monk had planted

54 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

near, so that it bore nothing. In 1120,
a bishop of Laon excommunicated the
caterpillars in his diocese ; and, the fol-
lowing year, St. Bernard excommunicat-
ed the flies in the Monastery of Foigny ;
and in 1510 the ecclesiastical court pro-
nounced the dread sentence against the
rats of Autun, Macon, and Lyons. These
examples are sufficient precedents. It
will be well for the council, however,
not to publish the bull either just before
or just after a rain; for nothing can kill
this pestilent heresy when the ground
is wet. . |
It is the time of festivals. Polly says
we ought to have one,—a strawberry-
festival. She says they are perfectly
delightful: it is so nice to get people
together !— this hot weather. They cre-
ate such a good feeling!: I myself am
very fond of festivals. I always go, —
-when I can consistently. Besides the

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 55

strawberries, there are ice-creams and
cake and lemonade, and that sort of
thing ; and one always feels so well the
next day after such a diet! But as so-
cial re-unions, if there are good things
to eat, nothing can be pleasanter; and
they are very profitable, if you have a
. good object. I agreed that we ought to
have a festival; but I-did not know
what object to devote it to. We are
not in need of an organ, nor of any pulpit-
cushions. I do not know as they use
pulpit-cushions now as much as they
used to, when preachers had to have
something soft to pound, so that they
would not hurt their fists. I suggested
pocket-handkerchiefs, and flannels for
next winter. But Polly says that will
not do at all. You must have some
charitable object, — something that ap-
peals to a vast sense of something ;
something that it will be right to get up

56 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

lotteries and that sort of thing for. ]
suggest a festival for the benefit of my
garden; and this seems feasible. In
order to make every thing pass off pleas-
antly, invited guests will bring or send
their own strawberries and cream, which
T shall be happy to sell to them at a slight
advance. There are a great many im-
provements which the garden needs;
among them a sounding-board, so that the
neighbors’ children can hear when I tell
them to get a little farther off from the
currant-bushes. I should also like a se-
lection from the ten commandments, in
big letters, posted up conspicuously, and
a few traps, that will detain, but not
maim, for the benefit of those who can-
not read. But what is most important
is, that the ladies should crochet nets to
cover over the strawberries. A good-
sized, ‘well-managed festival ought to
produce nets enough to cover my entire

»

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 57

beds; and I can think of no other
method of preserving the berries from
the birds next year. I wonder how
many strawberries it would need for a
festival, and whether they would cost
more than the nets.

I am more and more impressed, as the
summer goes on, with the inequality of
man’s fight with Nature; especially in a
celvilized state. In savagery, it does not
so much matter; for one does not take a
square hold, and put out his strength,
but rather accommodates himself to the
situation, and takes what he can cet,
without raising any dust, or putting
himself into everlasting opposition. But
the minute he begins to clear a spot lar-
ger than he needs to sleep in for a
night, and to try to have his own way in
the least, Nature is at once up, and vigi-
lant, and contests him at every step with
all her ingenuity and unwearied vigor

58 MY SUMMER IN A-GARDEN. >

This talk of subduing Nature is pretty
much nonsense. I do not intend to
surrender in thé midst of the summer
campaign, yet I cannot but think how
much more peaceful my relations woul:l
now be with the primal forces, if I had
let Nature make the garden according
to her own notion. (This is written
with the thermometer at ninety degrees,
and the weeds starting up with a fresh-
ness and vigor, as if they had just
thought of it for the first time, and had
ngt been cut down and dragged out
every other day since the snow went
off.)

We have got down the forests, and
exterminated savage beasts; but Nature ;
is no more subdued than before: she
only changes her tactics, — uses smaller
guns, so to speak. She re-enforces her-
self with a variety of bugs, worms, and
vermin, and weeds, unknown to the sav-

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 59

age state, in order to make war-upon
the things of our planting; and calls
in the fowls of the air, just as we think
the battle is won, to snatch away the
booty. When one gets almost weary of
the struggle, she is as fresh as at the
- beginning, —just, in fact, ready for the
fray. I, for my part, begin to appreci-:
ate the value of frost and snow; for
they give the husbandman a little peace,
and enable him, for a season, to contem-
plate his incessant foe subdued. I do
not wonder that the tropical people,
where Nature never goes to sleep, give
it up, and sit in lazy acquiescence.

Here I have been working all the
season to make a piece of lawn. It had
to be graded and sowed and rolled; and
IT have been shaving it like a barber.
When it was soft, every thing had a ten-
dency to go on to it, —cows, and espe-
cially wandering hackmen. Hackmen'

60 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

(who are a product of civilization) know
.a lawn when they see it. They rather
have a fancy for it, and always try to
drive so as to cut the sharp borders of
it, and leave the marks of their wheels
in deep ruts of cut-up, ruined turf. The
other morning, I had just been running’
the mower over the lawn, and stood
regarding its smoothness, when I noticed
one, two, three pufis of fresh earth in it;
and, hastening thither, I found that the
mole had arrived to complete the work
of the hackmen. In a half-hour, he had
rooted up the ground like a pig. I
found his run-ways. I waited for him
with a spade. He did not appear; but,
the next time I passed by, he had
ridged the ground in all directions,—a
smooth, beautiful animal, with fur like
silk, if you could only catch him. He
appears to enjoy the lawn as much as
the hackmen did. He does not care

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 61

how smooth it is. He is constantly
mining, and ridging it up. I am not
sure but he could be counter-mined. I
have half a mind to put powder in here
and there, and blow the whole thing
into the air. Some folks set traps for
the mole; but my moles never seem to
go twice in the same place. I am not
sure but it would bother them to sow
the lawn with interlacing snake-grass
(the botanical name of which, somebody
writes me, is. devil-grass: the first
time I have heard that the Devil has a
botanical name), which would worry
them, if it is as difficult for them to get
through it as it is for me.

Ido not speak of this mole in any
tone of complaint. He is only a part-of
the untiring resources which Nature
brings against the humble gardener. - I»
desire to-write nothing against him
which I should wish to recall at the last,

62 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

—nothing foreign to the spirit of that
beautiful saying of the dying boy, “ He
had no copy-book, which, dying, he was
sorry he had blotted.”

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 63

EIGHTH WEEK.

Mt garden has been visited by a

High Official Person. President
G—nt was here just before the Fourth,
getting his mind quiet for that event
by a few days of retirement, staying
with a friend at the head of our street;
and I asked him if he wouldn’t like to
come down our way Sunday afternoon,
and take a plain, simple look at my gar-
den, eat a little lemon ice-cream and
jelly-cake, and drink a glass of native
lager-bier. I thought of putting up
over my gate, “ Welcome to the Na-
tion’s Gardener ;” but I hate nonsense,
and didn’t do it. I, however, hoed dil-
igently on Saturday: what weeds I
couldn’t remove I buried, so that every

64 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

thing would look all right. The borders
of my drive were trimmed with scissors ;
and every thing that could offend the
Eye of the Great was hustled out of the
way. :

In relating this interview, it must be
distinctly understood that I am _ not
responsible for any thing that the presi- _
dent said; nor is he, either. He is not
a great speaker; but whatever he says
has an esoteric and an exoteric meaning ;
and some of his remarks about my
vegetables went very deep. I said
nothing to him whatever about politics,
at which he seemed a good deal sur-
prised: he said it was the first garden
he had ever been in, with a man, when
the “talk was not of appointments. I
told him that this was purely vege-
table; after which he seemed more at
his ease, and, in fact, delighted with
every thing he saw. He was much

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 65

interested in my strawberry-beds, asked
what varieties I had, and requested me
to send him some seed. He said the
patent-office seed was as difficult to
raise as an appropriation for the St.
Domingo business.. The playful bean
seemed also to please him; and he said
he had never seen such impressive corn
and potatoes at this time of year; that
it was to him an-unexpected pleasure,
and one of the choicest memories that
he should take away with him of his
visit to New England.

N.B.— That corn and those potatoes
which Gen. Gr—nt looked at, I will sell
for seed, at five dollars an ear, and one
dollar a potato. Office-seekers need not
apply.

Knowing the president’s great desire
for peas, I kept him from that part of
the garden where the vines grow. But
they could not be concealed. Those wha

6

66 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

say that the president is not a man easily
moved are knaves or fools. When he
saw my pea-pods, ravaged by the birds,
he burst into tears. A man of war, he
knows the value of peas. I told him
they were an excellent sort, “ The Cham-
pion of England.” As quick as a flash,
he. said, —

“¢ Why don’t you call them “The Rev-
erdy Johnson” ?

It was a very clever bon-mot ; but I
changed the subject.

The sight of my squashes, with stalks
as big as speaking-trumpets, restored the
president to his usual spirits. He said
the summer squash was the most Iudi-
crous vegetable he knew. It was nearly
all leaf and blow,’ with only a sickly,
crook-necked fruit after a mighty fuss.
Lt reminded him of the member of Con-
eress from ; but I hastened to
change the subject.

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 67

As we walked along, the keen eye of
the president rested upon some hand-
some sprays of “pusley,” which must
have grown up since Saturday night. It
was most fortunate ; for it led his excel-
lency to speak of the Chinese problem.
He said he had been struck with one cou-
pling of the Chinese and “ pusley ” in one
of my agricultural papers; and it had a
significance more far-reaching than I had
probably supposed. He had made the
_Chinese problem a special study. He
said that I was right in saying that
“nusley” was the natural food of
the Chinaman, -and that where the
“ nusley”’ was there would the Chinaman
be also. For his part, he welcomed -
the Chinese emigration: we needed the
Chinaman in our gardens to eat the
“nusley;” and he thought the whole
problem solved by this simple considera-
tion. To get rid of rats and “ pusley,” he

68 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

said, was a necessity of our civilization.
He did not care so much about the shoe-
business; he did not think that the lit-
tle Chinese shoes that. he had seen would
be of service in the army : but the gar-
den-interest was quite another affair.
We want to make a garden of our whole
country: the hoe, in the hands of aman
truly great, he was pleased to say, was
mightier than the pen. He presumed,
that Gen. B—tl—+r had never taken into —
consideration the garden-question, or he
would not assume -the position he does
with regard to the Chinese emigration.
He would let’ the Chinese come, even
if B—tl—r had to leave, I thought he
was going to say, but I changed the sub-
ject.

During our entire garden interview
(operatically speaking, the garden-scene),
_ the president was not smoking. I do not
know how the impression arose that he

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 69

“uses tobacco in any form;’’ for I have
seen him several times, and he was not
smoking. Indeed, I offered him a Con-
necticut six; but he wittily said that he
did not like a weed in a garden, —a re-
mark which I took to have a personal
political bearing, and changed the sub-
“ject. |

The president was a good deal sur-
_ prised at the method and fine appear-
ance of my garden, and to learn that I

~ had the sole care of it. Heasked me if

I pursued an original course, or whether
I got my ideas from writers on the sub-
ject. I told him that I had had no
time to read any thing on the subject
since I began to hoe, except “ Lothair,”
from which I got my ideas of landscape-
gardening; and that I had worked the
garden entirely according to my own
notions, except that I had borne in mind
his injunction, “ to fight it out on this line

70 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

if’’— The president stopped me ab-
ruptly, and said it was unnecessary to
repeat that remark: he thought he had
heard *t before. Indeed, he deeply re-
gretted that he had ever made it.
Sometimes, he said, after hearmg it in
speeches, and coming across it In resolu-
tions, and reading it in newspapers, and
having it dropped jocularly by facetious
politicians, who were boring him for an
office, about twenty-five times a day, say
for a month, it would get to running
through his head, like the “ shoo-fly”
song which B—tl—+r sings in the House,
until it did seem as if he should go dis-
tracted. He said, no man could stand
that kind of sentence hammering on his
brain for years.

The president was so much pleased
with my management of the garden,
that he offered me (at least, I so under-
stood him) the position of head gardener

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 71

at the White House, to have care of
the exotics. I told him that I thanked
him, but that I did not desire any
foreign appointment. I had resolved,
when -the administration came in, not
to take an appointment; and I had kept
my resolution. As to any home office,
I was poor, but honest; and, of course,
it would be useless for me to take one.
The president mused a moment, and
then smiled, and said he would see
what could be done for me. I did
not change the subject; but nothing
further was said by Gen. Gr—nt.

The president is a ereat talker (con-
trary to the general impression); but
I think he appreciated his quiet hour
in,my garden. Ue said it carried him
back to his youth farther than any
thing he had seen lately. He looked
forward with delight to the time when
he could again have his private garden,

(G MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

grow his own lettuce and tomatoes, and
not have to get so much “sarce” from
Congress.

The chair in which the president sat,
while declining to take a glass of lager,
I have had destroyed, in order that
no one may sit in it. It was the only
way to save it, if |] may so speak. It
would have been impossible to keep
it from use by any precautions. There
are people who would have sat in it,
if the seat had been set with iron spikes.
Such is the adoration of Station.

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 73

NINTH WEEK.

AM more and more impressed with

- the moral qualities of vegetables,
and contemplate forming a science
which shall rank with comparative
anatomy and comparative philology, —
the science of comparative vegetable
morality. We live in an age of proto-
plasm. And, if life-matter is essentially
the same in all forms of life, I purpose
to begin early, and ascertain the nature
of the plants for which I am responsible.
I will not associate with any vegetable
which is disreputable, or has not some
quality that can contribute to my moral
growth. Ido not care to be seen much
with the squashes or the dead-beets.
Tortunately 1 can cut down any sorts

74. MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

I do not like with the hoe, and, probably,
commit no more sin in so doing, than
the Christians did in hewing down the
Jews in the middle ages.

This matter of vegetable rank has not
been at all studied as it should be.
Why do we respect some vegetables,
and despise others, when all of them
come to an equal honor or ignominy on
the table? “The bean is a graceful,
confiding, engaging vine; but you
never can put beans into- poetry, nor
into the highest sort of prose. There
is no dignity in the bean. Corn, which,
in my garden, grows alongside the
bean, and, so far as I. can see, with no
affectation of superiority, is, however,
the child of song. It waves in all
literature. But mix it with beans, and
its high tone is gone. Succotash ‘is
vulgar. It is the bean init. The bean
is a vulgar vegetable, without culture,

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. (Ge

or any flavor of high society among
vegetables. Then there is the cool
cucumber, like so many people,—good
for nothing when it is ripe and the
wildness has gone out of it. How infe-
rior in quality it is to the melon, which
grows upon a similar vine, is of a like
watery consistency, but is not half so
valuable! The cucumber is a sort of
low comedian in a company where the
melon is a minor gentleman. I might
also contrast the celery with the potato.
The associations are as opposite as
the dining-room of the duchess and the
cabin of the peasant. I admire the
potato, both in vine and blossom; but
it is not aristocratic. I began digging
my potatoes, by the way, about the
4th of July; and I fancy I have dis-
covered the right way to doit. I treat
the potato just as I would a cow. I
do not pull them up, and shake them

76 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

out, and destroy them; bet I dig care-
fully at the side of the hill, remove
the fruit which is grown, leaving the
- vine undisturbed: and my theory is,
that it will go on bearing, and sub-
mitting to my exactions, until the frost
cuts it down. It is a game that one
would not undertake with a vegetable
of tone.

The lettuce is to me a most interest-
ing study. Lettuce 1s ike conversation:
it must be fresh and crisp, so sparkling,
that you scarcely notice the bitter in
it. Lettuce, like most talkers, is, how-
ever, apt to run rapidly to seed.
Blessed is that sort which comes to a
head, and so remains, like a few people
I know; growing more solid and satis-
factory and tender at the same time,
aud whiter at the centre, and crisp in
their maturity. Lettuce, like conver-
sation, requires a good deal of oil, to

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. Ti

avoid friction, and keep the company
smooth; a pinch of attic salt; a dash
of pepper; a quantity of mustard and
vinegar, by all means, but so mixed
that you will notice no sharp contrasts ;
and a trifle of sugar. You can put any
thing, and the more things the better,
into salad, as into a conversation; but
every thing depends upon the skill of ©
mixing. I feel that I am in the best
society when I am with lettuce. It
is in the select circle of vegetables.
The tomato appears well on the table;
but you do not want to ask its origin.
It is a most agreeable parvenu. Of
course, I have said nothing about the
berries. They live in another and more
ideal region; except, perhaps, the cur-
rant. Here we see, that, even among
berries, there are degrees of breeding.
The currant is well enough, clear as
truth, and exquisite in color; but I ask |

78 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

you to notice how far it is from the
exclusive hauteur of the aristocratic
strawberry, and the native refinement
of the quietly elegant raspberry.

I do not know that chemistry, search-
ing for protoplasm, is able to discover
the tendency of vegetables. It can
only be found out by outward observa- |
tion. I confess that I am suspicious of
the bean, for instance. There are signs
init of an unregulated life. I put up
the most attractive sort of poles for my
Limas. They stand high and straight,
like church-spires, in my theological
garden, —lifted up; and some of them
have even budded, like Aaron’s rod.
No church-steeple in a New-England
village was ever better fitted to draw
to it the rising generation on Sunday,
than those- poles to lift up my beans
towards heaven. Some of them did run
up the sticks seven feet, and then

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. vas)

strasgled off into the air in a wanton
manner; but more than half of them
went galivanting off to the neighboring
grape-trellis, and wound their tendrils
with the tendrils of the grape, with a
disregard of the proprieties of life
which is a satire upon human nature.
And the grape is morally no better. I
think the ancients, who were ~ not
troubled with the recondite mystery of
protoplasm, were right in the mythic
union of Bacchus and Venus.

Talk about the Darwinian theory of
development, and the principle of
natural selection! I should lke to see a
garden let to run in accordance with it.
If I had left my vegetables and weeds
to a free fight, in which the strongest
specimens only should come to maturi-
ty, and the weaker go to the wall, I can
clearly see that I should have had a pret-
ty mess ofit It would have been a scene

80 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

of passion. and license and brutality.
The “ pusley ” would have strangled the
strawberry ; the upright corn, which has
now ears to hear the guilty beating of
the hearts of the children who steal the
raspberries, would have been dragged
to the earth by the wandering bean;
the snake-grass would have left no place
for the potatoes under ground; and the
tomatoes would have been swamped by
the lusty weeds. With a firm hand, I
have had to make my own “natural
selection.” Nothing will so well bear
watching as a garden, except a family
of children next door. Their power of
selection beats mine. If they could
read half as well as they can steal a
‘while away, I should put up a notice,
“Ohildren, beware! There is Protoplasm

b)

here.” But I suppose it would have no
effect. I believe they would eat proto-

plasm as quick as any thing else, ripe

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 81

or green. I wonder if this is going to
be a cholera-year. Considerable cholera
is the only thing that would let my
apples and pears ripen. Of course I do
not care for the fruit; but I do not
want to take the responsibility of letting
so much “ life-matter,” full of crude and
even wicked vegetable-human tenden-
cies, pass into the composition of the
neighbors’ children, some of whom may
be as immortal as snake-grass. There
ought to be a public meeting about this,
and resolutions, and perhaps a clam-
bake. At least, it ought to be put into

the catechism, and put in strong.
6 :

82 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

TENTH WEEK.

I THINK I have discovered the way

to keep peas from the birds. I
tried the scare-crow plan, in a way
which I thought would out-wit the —
shrewdest bird. The brain of the bird
is not large; but it is all concentrated on
one object, and that is the attempt to
elude the devices of modern civilization
which injure his chances of food. I
knew, that, if I put up a complete stuffed
man, the bird would detect the imita-
tion at once: the perfection of the thing
would show him that it was a trick.
People always overdo the matter when
they attempt deception. I therefore
hung some loose garments, of a bright
color, upon a rake-head, and set them

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 83

up among the vines. The supposition
was, that the bird would think there was
an effort to trap him, that there was a
man behind, holding up these garments,
and would sing, as he kept at a
distance, “‘ You can’t catch me with any
such double device.” The bird would
know, or think he knew, that I would
not hang up such a scare, in the ex-
pectation that it would pass for a man,
and deceive a bird; and he would there-
fore look for a deeper plot. I expected
to out-wit the bird by a duplicity that
was simplicity itself. I may have over-
calculated the sagacity and reasoning
power of the bird. At any rate, I did
over-calculate the amount of peas I
should gather.

But my game was only half played.
In another part of the garden were other
peas, growing and blowing. To these I
took good care not to attract the atten-

84. MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

"tion of the bird by any scare-crow what-
ever! I left the old scare-crow con-
spicuously flaunting above the old vines;
and by this means I hope to keep the
attention of the birds confined to that
side of the garden. Jam convinced that
this is the true use of a scare-crow: itis
a lure, and not a warning. If you wish
to Save men from any particular vice,
set up a tremendous cry of warning
about some other; and they will all give
their special efforts to the one to which
attention is called. This profound truth
is about the only thing I have yet real-

ized out of my pea-vines.

However, the garden does begin to
yield. I know of nothing that makes
one feel more complacent, in these July
days, than to have his vegetables from
his own garden. What an effect it has
on the market-man and the butcher! It
is a kind of declaration of independence.

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 85

The market-man shows me his peas and
beets and tomatoes, and supposes he
shall send me out some with the meat.
“No, I thank you,” I say carelessly: “I
am raising my own this year.” Whereas
I have been wont to remark, “Your ve-
getables look a little wited this wea-
ther,” I now say, “ Wnat a fine lot of

{ 2?

vegetables you've got When a man
is not going to buy, he can afford to be
generous. To raise his own vegetables
makes a person: feel, somehow, more lib-
eral. I think the butcher is touched by
the influence, and cuts off a better roast
forme. The butcher is my friend when
he sees that I am not wholly dependent
onhim.

It is at home, however, that the effect
is most marked, though sometimes in a
way that I had not expected. I have
never read of any Roman supper that
seemed to me equal to a dinner of my

86 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

own vegetables; when every thing on
the table is the product of my own la-
bor, except the clams, which I have not
been able to raise yet, and the chickens,
which have withdrawn from the garden
just when they were most attractive. It
is strange what a taste you suddenly have
for things you never liked before. The
squash has always been to me a dish of
contempt; but I eat it now as if it were
my best friend. I never cared for the
beet or the bean; but I’ fancy now that
I could eat them all, tops and all, so
completely have they been transformed
by the soil in which they grew. I think
the squash is less squashy, and the. beet ~
has a deeper hue of rose, for my care of
them.

I had begun to nurse a good deal of
pride in presiding over a table whereon
was the fruit of my honest industry
But woman ! — John Stuart Mill is right

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 87

when he says that we do not know any
thing about women. Six thousand years
is as one day with them. I thought I
had something to do with those ve-
getables. But when I saw Polly seated
at her side of the table, presiding
over the new and susceptible vegetables,
flanked by the squash and the beans, and
smiling upon the green corn and the new
potatoes, as cool as the cucumbers which
lay sliced in ice before Her, and when
she began to dispense the fresh dishes, I
saw at once that the day of my destiny
was over. You would have thought
that she owned all the vegetables, and
had raised them all from their earliest
years. Such quiet, vegetable airs! Such
gracious appropriation! At length I
said, —

“ Polly, do you know who planted that
squash, or those squashes ?”’

“ James, I suppose.”

+

88 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

“Well, yes, perhaps James did plant
them, to a certain extent. But who
hoed them ?”’

& Wie dads

“‘ We did!” I said in the most sarcas-
tic manner. “And I suppose we put on
the sack-cloth and ashes, when the
striped bug came at four o'clock, A.M.,
and we watched the tender leaves, and
watered night and morning the feeble
plants. I tell you, Polly,” said I, un-
corking the Bordeaux raspberry vinegar,
“there is not a pea here that does not
represent a drop of moisture wrung
from my- brow, not a beet that does not
stand for a back-ache, not a squash that
has not caused me untold anxiety ; and
I did hope — but I will say no more.”

Observation. — In this sort of family
discussion, “I will say no more” is the
most effective thing you can close up
with.

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 89

Tam not an alarmist. I hope I am as
cool as anybody this hot summer. But
Tam quite ready to say to Polly, or any
other woman, “ You can have the ballot;
only leave me the vegetables, or, what is
more important, the consciousness of
power in vegetables.” I see how it is.
Woman is now supreme in the house.
She already stretches out her hand to
grasp the garden. She will gradually
control every thing. Woman is one of
the ablest and most cunning creatures
who have ever mingled in human affairs.
T understand those women who say they
don’t want the ballot. They purpose to
hold the real power, while we go through
the mockery of making laws. They
want the power without the responsi-
bility. (Suppose my squash had not
come up, or my beans — as they threat-
ened at one time — had gone the wrong
way: where wouldI have been?) We

90 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

are to be held to all the responsibilities.
Woman takes the lead in all the depart-
ments, leaving us politics only. And
what is politics? Let me raise the vege-
tables of a nation, says Polly, and I care
not who makes its politics. Here I sat
at the table, armed with the ballot, but
really powerless among my own vege-
tables: While we are being amused by
the ballot, woman is quietly taking
things into her own hands.

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 91

ELEVENTH WEEK.

ERHAPS, after all, it is not what you
get out of a garden, but what you put

into it, that is the most remunerative.
What isaman? A question frequently
_ asked, and never, so far as I know, satis-
factorily answered. He commonly spends
his seventy years, if so many are given
him, in getting ready to enjoy himself.
How many hours, how many minutes,
does one get of that pure content
which is happmess? I do not mean
laziness, which is always discontent; but
that serene enjoyment, in which all the
natural senses have easy play, and the
unnatural ones have a holiday. There
is probably nothing that has such a tran-
quillizing effect, and leads into such con-

92 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

tent, as gardening. By gardening, I da
not mean that insane desire to raise ve-
getables which some have ; but the phil-
osophical occupation of contact with the
earth, and companionship with gently
srowing things and patient processes;
that exercise which soothes the spirit,
and develops the deltoid muscles.

In half an hour I can hoe myself right
away from this world, as we commonly
see it, into a large place where there are.
no obstacles. What an occupation it is for
thought! The mind broods like a hen
on eggs. The trouble is, that you are -
not thinking about any thing, but are
really vegetating like the plants around
you. I begin to know what the joy of
the grape-vine is in running up the trel-
lis, which is similar to that of the squirrel
in running up a tree. We all have some-
thing in our nature that requires contact.
with the earth. In the solitude of gar-

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 93

den-labor, one gets into a sort of com-
munion with the vegetable life, which
makes.the old mythology possible. For
instance, I can believe that the dryads
are plenty this summer: my garden is
like an ash-heap. Almost all the mois-
ture it has had in weeks has been the
sweat of honest industry.

The pleasure of gardening in these
days, when the thermometer is at ninety,
is one that I fear I shall not be able to
make intelligible to my readers, many
of whom do not appreciate the delight
of soaking in the sunshine. I suppose
that the sun, going through a man, as it
will on such a day, takes out of him
rheumatism, consumption, and every
other disease, except sudden death —
from sun-stroke. But, aside from this,
there is an odor from the evergreens,
the hedges, the various plants and vines,
that is only expressed and set afloat at a

94 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

high temperature, which is delicious;
and, hot as it may be, a little breeze will
come at intervals, which can be heard in
the tree-tops, and which is an unobtru-
sive benediction. I hear a quail or two
whistling in the ravine; and there is a
good deal of fragmentary conversation
going on among the birds, even on the
warmest days. The companionship of
Calvin, also, counts fora good deal. He
usually attends me, unless I work too
long in one place; sittmg down on the
turf, displaying the ermine of his breast,
and watching my movements with great
intelligence. He has a feline and genu-
. Ine love for the beauties of Nature, and
will establish himself where there is a
good view, and look on it for hours. He
always accompanies us when we go to
gather the vegetables, seeming to be de-
sirous to know what we are to have for
dinner. He is a connoisseur in the gar:

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 95

den; being fond of almost all the vege-
tables, except the cucumber,—a dietetic
‘hint to man. I believe it is also said
that the pig will not eat tobacco. These
are important facts. It is singular, how-
ever, that those who hold up the pigs as
models to us never hold us up as models
to the pigs.

I wish I knew as much about natural
history and the habits of animals as
Calvin does. He is the closest observer
I ever saw; and there are few species of
animals on the place that he has not
analyzed. I think that he has, to use a
euphemism very applicable to him, got
outside of every one of them, except
the toad. To the toad he is entirely
indifferent; but I presume he knows
that the toad is the most useful animal
in the garden. I think the Agricultural
Society ought to offer a prize for the
finest toad. When Polly comes to sit in

96 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

the shade near my strawberry-beds, to
shell peas, Calvin is always lying near in
apparent obliviousness; but not the
slightest unusual sound can be made in ~
the bushes, that he is not alert, and pre-
pared to investigate the cause of it. It
is this habit of observation, so cultivated,
which has given him such a trained
mind, and made him so philosophical.
It is within the capacity of even the
humblest of us to attain this.

And, speaking of the philosophical
temper, there is no class of men whose
society is more to be desired for this
quality than that of plumbers. They
are the most agreeable men I know;
and the boys in the busmess begin to be
agreeable very early. I suspect the se-
cret of it is, that they are agreeable by
the hour. In the dryest days, my foun- —
tain became disabled: the pipe was
stopped up. utiN’ couple of plumbers,

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 91

with the implements of their craft, came
out to view the situation. There was
a good deal of difference of epinion
about where the stoppage was. I found
the plumbers perfectly willing to sit
down and talk about it,—talk by the
hour. Some of their guesses and re-
marks were exceedingly ingenious; and
their general observations on other sub-
jects were excellent in their way, and
could hardly have been better if they
had been made by the job. The work
dragged a little —ags it is apt to do by
the hour. The plumbers had occasion to
make me several visits. Sometimes
they would find, upon arrival, that they
had forgotten some indispensable tool,
and one would go back to the shop, a

mile and a half, after it; and his com-
rade would await his return with the
most exemplary patience, and sit déwn
and talk,— always by the hour. I dc

7

98 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

not know but it is a habit to have some-
thing wanted at the shop. They seemed
to me very good workmen, and always
willing to stop and talk about the job,
or any thing else, when I went near
them. Nor had they any of that im-
petuous hurry that is said to be the
bane of our American civilization. To
their credit be it said, that I never ob-
served any thing of it in them. They
can afford to wait. Two of them will
sometimes wait nearly half a day while
a comrade goes for a tool. They are
patient and philosophical. It is a great
pleasure to meet such men. One only
wishes there was some work he could do
for them by the hour. There ought to
be reciprocity. I think they have very
nearly solved the problem of Life: itis
to work for other people, never for
yourself, and get your pay by the hour.
You then have no anxiety, and little

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 99

work. If you do things by the job,
you are perpetually driven: the hours
are scourges. If you work by the hour,
you gently sail on the stream of Time,
which is always bearing you on to the
haven of Pay, whether you make any ef-
fort, or not. Working by the hour tends
to make one moral. A plumber working
by the job, trying to unscrew a rusty,
refractory nut, in a cramped position,
where the tongs continually slipped off,
would swear; but I never heard one of
them swear, or exhibit the least impa-
tience at such a vexation, working by the
hour. Nothing can move a man who is
paid by the hour. How sweet the flight
of time seems to his calm mind!

100 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

TWELFTH WEEK.

R. HORACE GREELEY, the intro-
duction of whose name confers an

honor upon this page (although I ought
to say that it is used entirely without
his consent), is my sole authority im
agriculture. In politics, I do not dare to
follow him; but in agriculture he is irre-
sistible. When, therefore, I find him ad-
vising Western farmers not to hill up their
corn, I think that his advice must be po-
litical. You must hill up your corn.
People always have hilled up their corn. .
It would take a constitutional amend-
ment to change the practice, that has
pertained ever since maize was raised.
“Tt will stand the drought better,” says
Mr. Greeley, “if the ground is left level.”

eel
MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 101

I have corn in my garden, ten and
twelve feet high, strong and lusty,
standing the drought lke a, grenadier ;
and it is hilled. In advising’ this rad-
ical change, Mr. Greeley evidently has
a political purpose. He might just as
well say that you should not hill beans,
when everybody knows that a “hill of
beans” is one of the most expressive
symbols of disparagement. When I be-
come too lazy to hill my corn, I, too, shall
go into politics.

Iam satisfied that it is useless to try
to cultivate “pusley.” Iset a little of
it one side, and gave it some extra care.
It did not thrive as well as that which I
was fighting. The fact is, there isa spirit
of moral perversity in the plant, which
makes it grow the more, the more it is
interfered with. I am satisfied of that.
1 doubt if any one has raised more
“pusley” this year than I have; and

a
102 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

my warfare with it has been continual.
Neither of us has slept much. If you
combat it, it will grow, to”use an ex-
pression that will be understood by-
many, like the devil. I have a neigh-
bor, a good Christian man, benevolent,
and a person of good judgment. He
planted next to me an acre of turnips
recently. A few days after, he went to
look at his crop; and he found the en-
tire ground covered with a thick and
luxurious carpet of “pusley,’ with a
turnip-top worked in here and there as
an ornament. I have seldom seen so
thrifty a field. I advised my neighbor
next time to sow “ pusley ;”’ and then he
might get a few turnips. IJ wish there
was more demand in our city markets
for “pusley” as a salad. I can recom-
mend it.

It does not take a great man to soon
discover, that, in raising any thing, the

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 103

ereater part of the plants goes into stalk
and leaf, and the fruit is a most incon-
siderable portion. I plant and hoe a
hill of corn: it grows green and stout,
and waves its broad leaves high in the
air, and is months in perfecting itself,
and then yields us not enough for a
dinner. It grows because it delights to
do so,—to take the juices out of my
ground, to absorb my fertilizers, to wax
luxuriant, and disport itselfin the sum-
mer air, and with very little thought of
making any return to me. I might. go
" all through my garden and fruit-trees
with a similar result. I have heard of
places where there was very little land
to the acre. It is universally true, that
there is a great deal of vegetable show
and fuss for the result produced. I do
not complain of this. One cannot
expect vegetables to be better than men:
and they make a great deal of osten-

104. MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

tatious splurge ; and many of them come
to no result at last. Usually, the more
show of leaf and wood, the less fruit.
This melancholy reflection is thrown in
here in order to make dog-days seem
cheerful in comparison. |

One of the minor pleasures of life is
that of controlling vegetable activity |
and aggressions with the pruning-knife.
Vigorous and rapid growth is, however,
a necessity to the sport. ‘To prune
feeble plants and shrubs is like acting
the part of dry-nurse to a sickly orphan.
You must feel the blood of Nature bound ~
-under your hand, and get the thrill of
its life in your nerves. To control and
culture a strong, thrifty plant, in. this
_ way, is like steering a ship under full
headway, or driving a locomotive with
your hand on the lever, or pulling the
reins over a fast horse when his blood
and tail are up. I do not understand,

a

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 105

by the way, the pleasure of the jockey in
setting up the tail of the horse artificial-
ly. If I had a horse with a tail not
able to sit up; I should feed the. horse,
and curry him into good spirits, and let
him set up his own tail. When I see a
poor, spiritless horse going by with an
artificially set-up tail, it is only a signal
of distress. I desire to be surrounded
only by healthy, vigorous plants and
trees, which require constant cutting-in
and management. Merely to cut away
dead branches is like perpetual attend-
ance at a funeral, and puts one in low
spirits. I want to have a garden and
orchard rise up and meet me every
morning, with the request to “lay on,
Macduff.” I respect old age; but an
old currant-bush, hoary with mossy
bark, is a melancholy spectacle.

I suppose the time has come when I
am expected to say something about

n

-
106 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

fertilizers: all agriculturists do. When
you plant, you think you cannot fertilize
too much: when you get the bills for
the manure, you think you cannot fer-
tulize too little. Of course, you do not
expect to get the value of the manure
back in fruits and vegetables; but
something is due to science, —to chem-
istry in particular. You must have a
knowledge of soils, must have your soil
analyzed, and then go into a course of
experiments to find what it needs. It
needs analyzing,—that, I am _ clear
about: every thing needs that. You
had better have the soil analyzed before
you buy : if there is “ pusley”’ in it, let
it alone. See if it isa soil that requires
iuch hoeing, and how fine it will get
if there is no rain for two months. But
when you come to fertilizing, if I under-
stand the agricultural authorities, you
open a pit that will ultimately swallow

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 107

you up, —farm and all. It is the great
subject of modern times, how to fer-
tilize without ruinous expense; how, in
short, not to starve the earth to death -
while we get our living out of it.
’ Practically, the business is hardly to the
taste of a person of a poetic turn of
mind. The details of fertilizmg are not
| agreeable. -Michael Angelo, who tried
every art, and nearly every trade, never
gave his mind to fertilizmg. It is much
pleasanter and easier to fertilize with a
pen, as the agricultural writers do, than
with a fork. And this leads me to say,
that, in carrying on a garden yourself,
you must have a “ consulting” gardener ;
that is, a man to do the heavy and
unpleasant work. To such a man, I say,
in language used by Demosthenes to the |
Athenians, and which is my advice to all
cardeners, “ Fertilize, fertilize, fertilize!”

108 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

THIRTEENTH WEEK.

iu FIND that gardening has unsurpassed

advantages for the study of natural
history; and some scientific facts have
come under my own observation, which
cannot fail to interest naturalists and
un-naturalists in about the same degree.
Much, for instance, has been written
about the toad, an animal without which
no garden would be complete. But
little account has been made of his
value: the beauty of his eye alone hag
been dwelt on; and little has been said
‘of his mouth, and its important function
- as'a fly and bug trap. His habits, and
even his origin, have been misunder-
stood. Why, as an illustration, are
toads so plenty after a thunder-shower ?

(

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 109

All my life long, no one has been able
to answer me that question. Why
after a heavy shower, and in the midst
of it, do such multitudes of toads, espe-
elally little ones, hop about on the gravel-
walks? For many years, I believed that
they rained down; and I suppose many
people think so stilk They are so small,
and they come in such numbers only in
the shower, that the supposition is not
a violent one. “ Thick as toads after a
shower,’ is one of our best proverbs.
I asked an explanation of this of a
thoughtful woman, — indeed, a leader in
the great movement to have all the
toads hop im any direction, without any
distinction of sex or religion. Her
reply was, that the toads come out
during the shower to get water. This,
however, is not the fact. I have dis-
covered that they come out not to get

water. I deluged a dry flower-bed, the

L116 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

other night, with pailful after pailful of
water. Instantly the toads came out
of their holes in the dirt, by tens and
twenties and fifties, to escape death by
drowning. The big ones fled away in a
ridiculous streak of hopping; and the
little ones sprang about in the wildest
confusion. The toad is just like any
other land animal: when his house is
full of water, he quits it. These facts,
with the drawings of the water and the
toads, are at the service of the distin-
guished scientists of Albany in New
York, who were so much impressed by
the Cardiff Giant.

The domestic cow is another animal
whose ways I have a chance to study,
and also to obliterate in the garden.
One of my neighbors has a cow, but no
land; and he seems desirous to pasture
her on the surface of the land of other
people: a very reasonable desire. The

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. ielat

man proposed that he should be allowed
to cut the grass from my grounds for
his cow. I knew the cow, having often
had her nm my garden; knew her «gait
and: the size of her feet, which struck
me as a little large for the size of the
body. Having no cow myself, but
acquaintance with my neighbor’s, I told
him that I thought it would be fair for
him to have the grass. He was, there-
fore, to keep the grass nicely cut, and
to keep his cow at home. I waited
some time after the grass needed cut-
ting; and, as my neighbor did not ap-
pear, I hired it cut. No sooner was it
done, than he promptly appeared, and
raked up most of it, and carried it away.
He had evidently been waiting that
opportunity. When the* grass grew
again, the neighbor did not appear with
his scythe; but one morning I found the
cow tethered on the sward, hitched near

at

tip MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

the clothes-horse, a short distance from
the house. This seemed to be the
man’s idea of the best way to cut the
grass. I disliked to have the cow there,
because I knew her inclination to pull up
the stake, and transfer her field of mow-
ing to the garden, -but especially
because of her voice. She has the most
melancholy “moo” I ever heard. It
is like the wail of one un-infallible, ex-
communicated, and lost. It is a most
distressing perpetual reminder of the
brevity of life and the shortness of
feed. It is unpleasant to the family.
We sometimes hear it in the middle of
the night, breaking the silence like a
suggestion of coming calamity. It is as
bad as the howling of a dog at a funeral.

I told the man about it; but he
seemed to think that he was not respon-
sible for the cow’s voice. I then told
him to take her away; and he did, at

1%

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 113

intervals, shifting her to different parts
of the grounds in my absence, so that
the desolate voice would startle us’ from:
unexpected quarters. If I were to un-
hitch the cow, and turn her loose, I
knew where she would go. If I were
to lead her away, the question was,
Where”? forI did not fancy leading a
cow about till I could find somebody
who was willing to pasture her. To this
dilemma had my excellent neighbor
reduced me. But I found him, one
Sunday morning,—a day when it would
not do to get angry, —tying his cow at
the foot of the hill; the beast all the
time going on in that abominable voice.
I told the man that I could not have the
cowinthe grounds. He said, “ All right,

b

- boss;” but he did not go away. I
asked him to clear out. The man, who
is a French sympathizer from the Re-
public of Ireland, kept his temper per-

114 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

fectly. He said he wasn’t domg any
thing, just feeding his cow a bit: he
wouldn’t make me the least trouble in
the world. I reminded him that he had
been told again and again not to come
here; that he might have all the grass,
but he should not bring his cow upon
the.premises. The imperturbable man
assented to every thing that I said, and
kept on feeding his cow. Before I
got him to go to fresh scenes and pas-
tures new, the sabbath was almost
broken: but 1t was saved by one thing;
it is difficult to be emphatic when no
one is emphatic on the other side. The
man and his cow have taught me a
great lesson, which I shall recall when I
keep a cow. Ican recommend this cow,
if anybody wants one, as a steady
boarder, whose keeping will cost the
owner little; but, if her milk is at all
like her voice, those who drink it are on
the straight road to lunacy. |

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 115

I think I have said that we nave a
game-preserve. We keep quails, or try
to, im the thickly wooded, bushed, and
brushed ravine. This bird is a great
favorite with us, dead or alive, on ac-
count of its tasteful plumage, its tender
flesh, its domestic virtues, and _ its
pleasant pipme. Besides, although I
appreciate toads and cows, and all that
sort of thing, I like to have a game-
preserve more in the English style.
And we did. For in July, while the
game-law was on, and the young quails
were coming on, we were awakened one
morning by firing, — musketry - firing,
close at hand. My first thought was,
that war was declared; but, as I should
never pay much attention to war de-
clared at that time in the morning, |
went to sleep again. . But the occurrence

was repeated,—and not only early in

the morning, but at night. There was

116 MY SUMMER IN -A GARDEN.

calling of dogs, breaking down of brush,
and firing of guns. It is hardly pleasant
to have-guns fired in the direction of
the house, at your own quails. The
hunters could be sometimes seen, but
never caught. Their best time was
about sunrise; but, before one could
dress and get to the front, they would
retire. |

One morning, about four o'clock, I
heard the battle renewed. I sprang
up, but not in arms, and went to a
window. Polly (like another “blessed

x

damozel’’) flew to another window, —

“ The blessed damozel leaned out

From the gold bar of heaven,” —

and yreconnoitred from behind the
blinds.

“The wonder was not yet quite gone
From that still look of hers,”

when an armed man and a legged dog

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 117

appeared in the opening. I -was vigi-
lantly watching him.
“ And now
She spoke through the still weather.”
“Are you afraid to speak to him?”
asked Polly. Not exactly,

‘“‘she spoke as when
The stars sang in their spheres.”
Stung by this inquiry, I leaned out
of the window till

“ The bar J leaned on (was) warm,”

and cried, —

“‘Halloo, there! What are you do-
me?” .

“Look out he don’t shoot you,” called
out Polly from the other window, sud-
denly going on another tack.

I explained, that a sportsman would
not be likely to shoot a gentleman in
his own house, with bird-shot, so Jong
as quails were to be had.

118 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

““You have no business here: - what
are you after?” I repeated.

“Tooking for a lost hen,” said the
man ag he strode away.

The reply was so satisfactory and
conclusive, that I shut the blinds, and
went to bed.

But one evening I overhauled one of
the poachers. Hearing his dog in the
thicket, I rushed through the brush, and
eame in sight of the hunter as he was
retreating down the road. He came
to a halt; and we had some conversation
ina high key. Of course, I threatened
to prosecute him. I believe that is the
thing to do in such cases; but how I
was to do it, when I did not know his
name or ancestry, and couldn’t see his
face, never occurred to me. (I remem-
ber, now, that a farmer once proposed
to prosecute me when I was fishing in a
trout-brook on his farm, and asked my

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 119

name for that purpose.) He said he
should smile to see me prosecute him.

“You can’t do it: there ain't no
notice up about trespassing.” This view
_ of the common law impressed me; and
I said, —

“ But these are private grounds.”

“Private h—!” was all his response.

You can’t argue much with a man
who has a oun in his hands, when you
have none. Besides, it might be a
-needle-gun, for aught I knew. I gave
it up, and we separated.

There is this disadvantage about hav-
ing a game-preserve attached to your
garden: it makes life too lively.

120 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

FOURTEENTH WEEK.

N these golden latter August days, Na-

ture has come to a serene equilibrium.
Having flowered and fruited, she is en-
joying herself. I can see how things
are going: it is a down-hill business after
this; but, for the time being, it is like
swinging in a hammock,— such a deli-
cious air, such a graceful repose! I take
off my hat as I stroll into the garden
and look about; and it does seem as if
Nature had sounded a truce. I didn’t
ask for it. I went out with a hoe;-
but the serene sweetness disarms me.
Thrice is he armed who has a long-
handled-hoe, with a double blade. Yet
to-day I am almost ashamed to appear

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 12]

in such a belligerent fashion, with this
terrible mitrailleuse of gardening.

The tomatoes are getting tired of
ripening, and are beginning to go into a
worthless condition, — green. The cu-
cumbers cumber the ground, — great yel-
low, over-ripe objects, no more to be com-
pared to the crisp beauty of their youth
than is the fat swine of the sty to the
clean little pig. The nutmeg-melons,
having covered themselves with deli-
cate lace-work, are now ready to leave
the vine. I know they are ripe if they
come easily off the stem.

- Moral Observations. —You can tell
when people are ripe by their willing-
ness to let go. Richness and ripeness
are not exactly the same. The rich are
apt to hang to the stem with tendcity.
I Lave nothing against the rich. If I
were not virtuous, I should like to be
rich. But we cannot have every thing,

122, MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

as the man said when‘he was down with
small-pox and cholera, and the yellow-
fever came into the neighborhood. *
Now, the grapes, soaked in this liquid
gold, called air, begin to turn, mindful
of the injunction, “to turn or burn.”
The clusters under the leaves are getting
quite purple, but look better than they
taste. I think there is no danger but
they will be gathered as soon as they are
ripe. One of the blessings of having an
open garden 1s, that I do not have to
watch my fruit: a dozen youngsters do |
that, and let it waste no time after
it matures. I wish it were possible to
grow a variety of grape like the explo-
sive bullets, that. should explode in the
stomach: the vine would-make such a
nice border for the garden, —a masked
battery of grape. The pears, too, are:
getting russet and heavy; and here and
there amid the shining leaves, one

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 123

' gleams as ruddy as the cheek of the
Nutbrown Maid. The Flemish Beauties
come off readily from the stem, if I take
them in my hand: they say all kinds of
beauty come off by handling.

The garden is peace as much as if it
were an empire. Even the man’s cow
lies down under the tree where the man
has tied her, with such an air of content-
ment, that I have small desire to disturb
-her. She is chewing my cud, as if it
were hers. Well, eat on and chew on,
melancholy brute. ‘I have not the heart.
to tell the man to take you away: and it
would do no good if I had; he wouldn’t |
doit. The-man has not a taking way.
Munch on, ruminant creature. The frost
will soon come; the grass will be brown.
Twill be charitable while this blessed lull
continues; for our benevolences must
soon be turned to other and more distant
objects, —the amelioration of the condi-

124 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

tion of the Jews, the education of the-
ological young men in the West, and
the like.

I do not know that these appearances
are deceitful; but I sufficiently know

that this is a wicked world, to be glad —

that I have taken it on shares. In fact,
I could not pick the pears alone, not to
speak of eating them. When I climb
the trees, and throw down the dusky

fruit, Polly catches it in her apron; near-
ly always, however, letting go when it
drops, the fall is so sudden. The sun
gets in her face; and, every time a pear
_ comes down, it is a surprise, like having
a tooth out, she says.

“Tf I couldn’t hold an apron better

than that!’?— But the sentence is not .

finished : it is useless to finish that sort
of a sentence in this delicious weather.
Besides, conversation is dangerous. As,
for instance, towards evening I am pre-

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 125

paring a bed for a sowing of turnips, —
not that I like turnips im the least; but
this is the season to sow them. Polly
comes out, and extemporizes her usual
seat to “consult me” about matters
while I work. I well know that some-
thing is coming.

“ This is a rotation of crops, isn’t it?”

“Yes: [have rotated the gone-to-seed
lettuce off, and expect to rotate the tur-
nips in; it is a political fashion.”

“JTsn’t it a shame that the tomatoes
are all getting ripe at once? What a
lot of squashes! I wish we had an oys-
ter-bed. Do you want me to help you
any more than I am Eelpiis es

“No, I thank you.” (I wonder oh
all this is about ?)

“Don’t you think we could sell some
strawberries next year ?”’

‘“‘ By all means, sell any thing. We
shall no doubt get rich out of this acre.”

126 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

“ Don’t be foolish.”

And now!
“Don’t you think it would be nice
to have a?””— And Polly unfolds a

small scheme of benevolence, which is
not quite enough to break me, and is
really to be executed in an economical
manner. “ Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Oh, yes! And where is the money
to come from?”

“‘] thought we had agreed to sell the
strawberries.’’

“Certainly. But I think we would
cae more money if we sold the plants
now.

“Well,” said Pally. concluding the
whole matter, “I am going to do it.”
And, having thus “ consulted” me, Polly
goes away; and I put in the turnip-
seeds quite thick, determined to raise
enough to sell. But not even this mer-
cenary thought can ruffle my mind as I

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 127

rake off the loamy bed. I notice, how-
ever, that the spring smell has gone out
of the dirt. That went into the first
crop.

In this peaceful unison with yielding
nature, I was a little taken aback to
find that a new enemy had turned up.
The celery had just rubbed through the
fiery scorching of the drought, and
stood a faint chance to grow; when I
noticed on the green leaves a big green-
and-black worm, called, I believe, the
celery-worm: but I don’t know who.
called him; I am sure I did not. It was
almost ludicrous that he should-turn up .
here, just at the end of the season, when -
T supposed that my war with the living
animals was over. Yet he was, no
doubt, predestinated ; for he went to
work as cheerfully as if he had arrived
in June, when every thing was fresh
and vigorous. It beats me— Nature

128 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

does. I doubt not, that, if I were to
leave my garden now for a week, it
wouldn’t know me. on my return. The
patch I scratched over for the turnips, —
and left as clean as earth, is already full
of ambitious “pusley,” which grows
with all the confidence of youth and the
skill of old age. It beats the serpent
as an emblem of immortality. While
all the others of us in the garden rest
and sit in comfort a moment, upon the
summit of the summer, it is as rampant
and vicious as ever. It accepts no
armistice.

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. * 2129

FIFTEENTH WEEK. -

lie is said that absence conquers all

things, love included ; but it has
a contrary effect on a garden. I was
absent for two or three weeks. I left
my garden a paradise, as paradises
go in this protoplastic world; and, when
I returned, the trail of the serpent was
over it all, so to speak. (This is in
addition to the actual snakes in it, which
are large enough to strangle children of
average size.) I asked Polly if she had
seen to the garden while I was away,
and she said she had. I found that all
the melons had been seen to, and the
early grapes and pears. The green
worm had also seen to about half the
celery ; and a large flock of apparently

9

130 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

perfectly. domesticated chickens were
roaming over the ground, gossiping in
the hot September sun, and picking up
any odd trifle that might be left. On
the whole, the garden could not have
been better seen to; though it would
take a sharp eye to see the potato-vines ©
amid the rampant ‘grass and weeds.

The new strawberry-plants, for one
thing, had taken advantage of my ab-
sence. Every one of them had sent out
as many scarlet runners as an Indian
tribe has. Some of them had blossomed ;
and a few had gone so far as to bear
ripe berries, —long, pear-shaped fruit,
hanging like the ear-pendants of an
East-Indian bride. I could not but
admire the persistence of these zealous
plants, which ‘seemed determined to
propagate themselves both by seeds
and roots, and make sure of immortality
in some way. Even the Colfax variety

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 131

was as ambitious as the others. After
having seen the declining letter of Mr.
Colfax, I did not suppose that tliis vine
would run any more, and intended te
root it out. But one can never say
what these politicians mean; and I shall
let this variety grow until after the
next election, at least; although I hear
that the fruit is: small, and rather sour.
If there is any variety of strawberries
that really declines to run, and devotes
itself to a private life of fruit-bearing, I
should like to get it. I may mention
here, since we are on politics, that the
Doolittle raspberries had sprawled all
over the strawberry-beds: so true is’ it
that politics makes strange bed-fellows.
But another enemy had come into the
strawberries, which, after all that has
‘been said in these papers, I am almost
ashamed to mention. But does the
preacher in the pulpit, Sunday after

132 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

Sunday, year after year, shrink from
speaking of sin? I refer, of course, to the
greatést enemy of mankind, “ p-sl-y.”
The ground was carpeted with it. I ©
should think that this was the tenth
crop of the season; and it was as good
as the first. I see no reason why our
northern soil is not as prolific as that of
the tropics, and will not produce as
"many crops in the year. The mistake
we make is in trying to force things
that are not natural to it. I have no
doubt, that, if we turn our attention to
“ nusley,’ we can beat the world.

I had no idea, until recently, how
generally this simple and thrifty plant is
feared and hated. Far beyond what I
had regarded as the bounds of civiliza-
tion, itis held as one of the mysteries
of a fallen world; accompanying the
home missionary onthis wanderings, and
preceding the footsteps of the Tract

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. too

Society. I was, not long-ago, in the
Adirondacks. _We had built a camp for
the night, in the heart of the woods,
high up on John’s Brook, and near the
foot of Mount Marcy: I can see the
lovely spot now. -It was on the bank of ©
the crystal, rocky stream, at the foot of
high and slender falls, which poured
into a broad amber basin. Out of this
basin we had just taken trout enough
for our supper, which had been killed,
and roasted over the fire on sharp sticks,
and eaten before they had an opportu-
nity to feel the chill of this deceitful
world. We were lying under the hut
of spruce-bark, on fragrant hemlock-
boughs, talking, after supper. In front
of us was a huge fire of birch-logs; and
over it we could see the top of the falls
glistening in the moonlight; and the
roar of the falls, and the brawling of the
stream near us, filled all the ancient

154 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

woods. It was a scene upon which one
would think no thought of sin could
enter. We. were talkimg with old
Phelps,.the guide. Old Phelps is at
once guide, philosopher, and friend. He
knows the woods and streams and moun-
tains, and their savage inhabitants, as
well as we know all our rich relations,
and what they are doing ; and, in lonely
bear-hunts and sable-trappings, he has
thought out-and solved most of the
problems of life. As he stands in his
wood-gear, he is as grizzly as an old cedar-
tree ; and he speaks in a high falsetto
voice, which would be invaluable to a
boatswain in a storm at sea.

We had been talking of all sulyects
about which rational men are interest-
ed, — bears, panthers, trapping, the hab-
its of trout, the tariff, the internal revenue
(to wit, the injustice of laying such a tax
on tobacco, and none on dogs: “ There

OL

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 13

ain’t no dog in the United States,” says
the guide, at the top of his voice, “ that
earns his livihg’’), the Adventists, the
Gorner Grat, Horace Greeley, religion,
the propagation of seeds in the wilder-
ness (as, for instance, where were the
seeds lying for ages that spring up into
certain plants and flowers as soon as a
spot is cleared anywhere in the most
remote forest; and why does a growth
of oak-trees always come up after a
growth of pine has been removed ?) —
in short, we had pretty nearly reached a
- solution of‘many mysteries, when Phelps
suddenly exclaimed with uncommon
energy, —

‘“‘ Wall, there’s one thing that beats
med”.

“What's that?” we asked with un-
disguised curiosity.

“ That’s ‘ pusley’!” he replied, in the
tone of a man who has come to one

136 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

door in life which is hopelessly shut, and’
from which he retires in despair.

‘¢ Where it comes from I don’t know,
nor what to do with it. It’s in my
garden; and I can’t get rid of it. It
beats me.”

About “pusley” the guide had no
theory and no hope. A feeling of awe
came over me, as we lay there at mid-
night, hushed by the sound of the
stream and the rising wind in the spruce-
tops. Then, man can go nowhere that
“»usley’”’ will not attend him. Though
he camp on the’ Upper Au Sable, or
penetrate the forest where rolls the
Allegash, and hears no sound save his
own allegations, he will not escape it.
It has entered the happy valley of
Keene, although there is yet no church
there, and only a feeble school part of
the year. Sin travels faster than they
that ride in chariots. I take my hoe,

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 137

and begin; but I feel that I am warring
against something whose roots take hold
on H. . ...

By the time a man gets to be eighty,
he learns that he is compassed by limi-
tations, and that there has been a
natural boundary set to his individual
powers. Ashe goes on in life, he begins
to doubt his ability to destroy all evil

and to reform all abuses, and to suspect
that there will be much left to do after
he has done. _ I stepped into my garden
in the spring, not doubting that I should
be easily master of the weeds. I have
simply learned that an institution which
is at least six thousand years old, and I
believe six millions, is not to be put
down in one season. 3

Ihave been digging my potatoes, if
anybody cares to know it. I planted
them in what are called “ Karly Rose,” —
the rows a little less than three feet

4

138 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

apart; but the vines came to an early
close in the drought. Digging potatoes
is a pleasant, soothing occupation, but
not poetical. It is good for the mind,
unless they are too small (as many of
mine are); when it begets.a want of
gratitude to the bountiful earth. What
‘small potatoes we all are, compared
with what we might be! We don’t
plough deep enough, any of us, for one
thing. Ishall put in the plough next
year, and give the tubers room enough.
I think they felt the lack of it this year:
many of them seemed ashamed to come
out so small. There is great pleasure in
turning out the brown-jacketed fellows
into the sunshine of a royal September
day, and seeing them glisten as they lie
thickly strewn on the warm soil. Life has
few such moments. But then they must
be picked up. The picking-up, in this
world, is always the unpleasant part of it.

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 139

SIXTEENTH WEEK.

I DO not hold myself bound to answer
the question, Does gardening pay?
Tt is so difficult to define what is meant by
paying. There is a popular notion, that,
unless a thing pays, you had better let
it alone; and I may say that there is a
public opinion that will not let a man or
woman continue in the indulgence of a
fancy that does not pay. And public
opinion is stronger than the legislature,
and nearly as strong as the ten com-
mandments: I therefore yield to popu-
lar clamor when I discuss the profit of
my garden.
As I look at it, you might as well ask,
Does a sunset pay? I know that a sun-
set is commonly looked on as a cheap

140 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

entertainment; but it is really one of
the most expensive. It is true that we
can all have front seats, and we do not
exactly need to dress for it as we do for
the opera; but the conditions under
which it is to be enjoyed are rather
dear. Among them I should name a
good suit of clothes, includiag some
trifling ornament, — not including back
hair for one sex, or the parting of it in
the middle for the other. I should add
also a good dinner, well cooked and di-
gestible; and the cost of a fair educa-
tion, extended, perhaps, through cenera-
tions in which sensibility and love of ©
beauty grew. What. I mean is, that if
aman is hungry and naked, and half a
savage, or with the love of beauty un-
developed in him, a sunset is thrown
away on him: so that it appears that the
conditions of the enjoyment of a sunset
are as costly as any thing in our civili-
zation.

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 141

Of course, there is no such thing as
absolute value in this world. You can
only estimate what a thing is worth to
you. Does gardening in a city pay?
You might as well ask if it pays to keep
hens, or a trotting-horse, or to wear a
gold ring, or to keep your lawn cut, or
your hair cut. Itis as you like it. In
a certain sense, it is a sort of profana-
tion to consider if my garden pays, or
to set a money-value upon my delight
init. I fear that you could not put it
inmoney. Job had the right idea in his
_ mind, when he asked, “Is there any
taste in the white of an egg?” -Sup-
pose there is not! What! shall I set a
price upon the tender asparagus or the
crisp lettuce, which made the sweet
spring areality? Shall I turn into mer-
chandise the red strawberry, the pale
green pea, the high-flavored raspberry,
the sanguinary beet, that love-plant the

142 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

tomato, and the corn which did not ©
waste its sweetness on the desert air,
but, after flowing in a sweet rill through
all our summer life, mingled at last with
the engaging bean in a pool of succo-
tash? Shall I compute in figures what
daily freshness and health and delight
the garden yields, let alone the large
crop of anticipation I gathered as soon
as the “first seeds got above ground?
I appeal to any gardening man of sound —
mind, if that which pays him best in
gardening is not that which he cannot
show in his trial-balance. Yet I yield
to public opinion, when I proceed to
make such a balance; and I do it with
the utmost confidence in figures.

I select as a representative vegetable,
in order to estimate the cost of garden-
ing, the potato. In my statement, I
shall not include the interest on the
value of the land. I throw in the land, ,

a

co

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 14

because it would otherwise have stood
idle: the thing generally raised on city
land is taxes. I therefore make the fol-
lowing statement of the cost and income
of my potato-crop, a part of it esti-
mated in connection with other garden
labor. I have tried to make it so as to
satisfy the income-tax collector : —

: Dr.
grec PATER Rye oI. ase cl \oheis.ascleiay-aatere z.* $0.50
BSS Nee hac u sie alla oie oiahags: Niel elele) s\steus aon s 1.50
WVRCRENDECR Eero crstre, eit cca. es RN ee: lithe acer wie wis 8.00

Assistance in planting and digging, d days —_ 6.75
Labor of self in planting, hoeing, digging,

picking up, 5 days at 17 cents........ 85
Wr alCOSES: lof te es wt OO ak gee) ade $17.60

Cr.

Two thousand five hundred mealy potatoes, [
RONG OTMISS: sane see PO ee SR NE See ere $50.00
Small potatoes given to neighbor’s pig... 00
ARG ERSIST eq bb yo een Se MeN oof ee $50.50
Balance, profit in cellar............ $32.90

Some of these items need explana-
tion. I have charged nothing for my

14t MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. -

own time waiting for the potatoes to
grow. My time in hoeing, fighting
weeds, &c., is put in at five days: it
may have been a little more. Nor have
I put in any thing for cooling drinks
while hoeing. I leave this out from
principle, because I always recommend
water to others. I had some difficulty
in fixing the rate of my own wages. It
was the first time that I had an oppor-’
tunity of paying what I thought labor
was worth; and I determined to make
a good thing of it for once. I figured
it right down to European prices, —
seventeen cents a day for unskilled la-
bor. Of course, I boarded myself. I
ought to say that I fixed the wages
after the work was done, or I might
have been tempted to do as some ma-
sons did who worked for me at four
dollars a day. They lay in the shade
and slept the sleep of honest toil full

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 145

half the time,—at least all the time
I was away. I have reason to believe, |
that when the wages of mechanics are
-raised to eight and ten dollars a day,
the workmen will not come at all: they
will merely send their cards.

I do not see any possible fault in the
above figures. I ought to say that I de-
ferred putting avalue.on the potatoes
until I had footed up the debit column.
This is always the safest way to do. I
had twenty-five bushels. I roughly es-
timated that there are one hundred
good ones to the bushel. Making my ~
own market-price, I asked two cents
apiece for them. This I should have
considered dirt cheap last June, when I
was going down the rows with the hoe.
Tf any one thinks that two cents each is
high, let him try to raise them.

Nature is “awful smart.” I intend to
be complimentary in saying so. She

10

146 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

shows it in little things. JI have men-

tioned my attempt to put in a few mod-
est turnips, near the close of the season.
I sowed the seeds, by the way, ia the most -
liberal manner. Into three or four short
rows I presume I put enough to sow an ~
acre; and they all came up,—came
up as thick as grass, as crowded and
useless as babies in a Chinese village.
Of course, they had to be thinned out;
that is, pretty much all pulled up; and
it took me a long time; for it takes a
conscientious man some time to ‘decide
which are the best and healthiest plants
to spare. After all, 1 spared too many.
That is the great danger everywhere in
this world (it may not be in the next) ;
things are too thick: we lose all in grasp-
ing for too much. The Scotch say, that .
no man ought to thin out his own tur-
nips, because he will not sacrifice enough
" to leave room for the remainder to grow: |

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 147

he should get his neighbor, who does not
care for the plants, to do it. But this is
mere talk, and aside from the point: if
there is any thing I desire to avoid in
these agricultural papers, it is digression.
I did think, that putting in these tur-
nips so late in the season, when general
activity has ceased, and in a remote part
of the garden, they would pass un-
noticed. But Nature never even winks,
as I can see. The tender. blades were
scarcely out of the ground, when she
sent a small black fly, which seemed to
have been born and held in reserve for
this purpose, —to cut the leaves. They
speedily made lace-work: of the whole
bed. Thus every thing appears to have
its special enemy,—except, perhaps,
Pp y : nothing ever troubles that.

Did the Concord Grape ever come to

more luscious perfection than this year?
or yield so abundantly? The golden

148 ' MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

sunshine has passed into them, and dis.
tended their purple skins almost to
bursting. Such heavy clusters! such
bloom! such sweetness! such meat and
drink in their round globes! What a
fine fellow Bacchus would have been, if
he had only signed the’ pledge when he
was a young man! I have taken off
clusters that were as compact and al-
most as large as the Black Hamburgs.
It is slow work picking them. I do not
see how the gatherers for the vintage
ever get off enough. It takes so long
to disentangle the bunches from the
leaves, and the interlacing vines, and the
supporting tendrils; and then I like to
hold up each bunch and look at it in the
sunlight, and get the fragrance and the
bloom of it, and show it to Polly, who is
making herself useful, as taster and com-
panion, at the foot of the ladder, before
dropping it into the basket. But we

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 149

have other company. The robin, the
most knowing and greedy bird out of
' paradise (I trust he will always be kept
out), has discovered that the grape-crop
is uncommonly good, and has come back,
with his whole tribe and family, larger
than it was in pea-time. He knows the
ripest bunches as well as anybody, and
‘tries them all. If he would take a whole
bunch here and there, say half the num-
ber, and be off with it, I should not so
much care. But he will not. He pecks
away at all the bunches, and spoils as
many as he can. It is time he went
south.

There is no prettier sight, to my eye,
than a gardener on a ladder in his grape-
arbor, in these golden days, selecting
the heaviest clusters of grapes, and
handing them down to one and another
of a group of neighbors and friends, who
stand under the shade of the leaves,

150 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

flecked with the sunlight, and cry, “ How
sweet!” “What nice ones!” and the
like, — remarks encouraging to the man
on the ladder. It is great pleasure to
see people eat grapes.
- Moral Truth. —I have no doubt that
grapes taste best in other peoples’
mouths. It is an old notion that it is
easier to be generous than to be stingy.
I am convinced that the majority of peo-
ple would be generous from selfish mo-
tives, if they had the opportunity.
Philosophical Observation. —Nothing
shows one who his friends are, like pros-
perity and ripe fruit. I had a good
friend in the country, whom I almost
never visited except in cherry-time.
By your fruits you shall know them.

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 15]

SEVENTEENTH WEEK.

[ like to go into the garden these
-“- warm latter days, and muse. To muse
is to sit in the sun, and not think of
any thing. JI am not sure but goodness
comes out of people who bask in the
sun, as it does out of a sweet apple
roasted before the fire. The late Sep-
tember and October sun of this latitude
is something like the sun of extreme
Lower Italy : you can stand a good deal
of it, and apparently soak a winter sup-
ply into the system. If one only could
take in his winter fuel in this way! The
next great discovery will, very likely, be
the conservation of sunlight. In the
correlation of forces, I look to see the
day when the superfluous sunshine will

152 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

be utilized; as, for instance, that which
has burned up my celery this year will
be converted into a force to work the
garden.

This sittmg in the sun amid the
evidences of a ripe year is the easiest
part of gardening I have experienced.
But what a combat has gone on here!
What vegetable passions have run the
whole gamut of ambition, selfishness,
greed of place, fruition, satiety, and now
rest here in the truce of exhaustion!
What a battle-field, if one may look
upon it so! The corn has lost its ammu-
nition, and stacked arms in a slovenly,
militia sort of style. The ground vines
are torn, trampled, and withered; and
the ungathered cucumbers, worthless
imelons, and golden squashes, lie about
like the spent bombs and exploded
shells of a battle-field. So the cannon-
balls lay on the sandy plain before Fort

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 153

Fisher, after the capture. So the great,
grassy meadow at Munich, any morning
during the October Fest, is strewn with
the empty beer-mugs. History con-
stantly repeats itself. There is a large
crop of moral reflections in my garden,
which anybody is at liberty to gather
who passes this way.

I have tried to get in any thing that
offered temptation to sin. There would
be no thieves if there was nothing to
steal; and I suppose, in the thieves’
catechism, the provider is as bad as the
thief; and, probably, Iam to blame for
leaving out a few winter-pears, which
some predatory boy carried off on Sun-
day. At first, I was angry, and said I
should like to have caught the urchin in
the act; but, on second thought, I was
glad I did not. The interview could
not have been pleasant. I shouldn’t
have known what to do with him. The

154 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

chances are, that he would have escaped
away with his pockets full, and jibed at
me from a safe distance. And, if I had
got my hands on him, I should have
been still more embarrassed. If I had
flogged him, he would have got over it
a good deal sooner than I should. That
sort of boy does not mind castigation
any more than he does tearing his
trousers in the briers. If I had treated
him with kindness, and conciliated hin
with grapes, showing him the enormity
of his offence, I suppose he would have
come the next night, and taken the re-
mainder of the grapes. The truth is,
that the public morality is lax on the
subject of fruit. If anybody puts
arsenic or gunpowder into his water-
melons, he is universally denounced as -
a stingy old murderer by the commu-
nity. A great many people regard
growing fruit as lawful prey, who would

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 155

not think of breaking into your cellar to
take it. I found a man once in my
raspberry-bushes, early in the season,
When we were waiting for a dish-full to
ripen. Upon inquirmg what he was
about, he said he was only eating some ;
and the operation seemed to be so natu-
ral and simple, that I disliked to disturb
him. And I am not very sure that one
has a right to the whole of an abundant
crop of fruit until he has gathered it.
At least, in a city garden, one might as
well conform his theory to the practice
of the community.

As for children (and it sometimes
looks as if the chief products of my
garden were small boys and hens), it is
admitted that they are barbarians. There
is no exception among them to this
condition of barbarism. This is not to
say that they are not attractive; for
they have the virtues as well as the

-156 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

vices of a primitive people. It is held
by some’ naturalists, that the child is
only a zodphyte, with a stomach, and
feelers radiating from it im search of
something to fill it. It is true that a
child is always hungry all over: but be
is also curious all over ; and his curiosity is
excited about as early as his hunger.
He immediately begins to put out. his
moral feelers into the unknown and the
infmite to discover what sort of an
existence this is into which he has come.
His imagination is quite as hungry as
his stomach. And again and again it is
stronger than his other appetites. You
can easily engage his imagination in a
story which will make him forget his
dinner. He is credulous and supersti-
tious, and open to all wonder. In this,
he is exactly like the savage races.
Both gorge themselves on the marvel-
lous ; and all the unknown is marvellous

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 157

tothem. I know the general impression
is, that children must be governed
through their stomachs. I think they
can be controlled quite as well through
their curiosity ; that being the more crav-
ing and imperious of the two. I have
seen children follow about a person who
told them stories, and interested them
with his charming talk, as greedily as if
his pockets had been full of bon-bons.
Perhaps this fact has no practical re-
lation to gardening; but it occurs to
me, that, if I should paper the outside of
my high board fence with the leaves of
“The Arabian Nights,” it would afford me
a good deal of protection, — more, in fact,
than spikes in the top, which tear trou-
sers, and encourage profanity, but do not
save much fruit. A spiked fence is a
challenge to any boy of spirit. But, if
the fence were papered with fairy-tales,
would he not stop to read them until it

158 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

was too late for him to climb into the
garden? Idon’tknow. Human nature
“is vicious. The boy might regard the
picture of the garden of the Hesperi-
des only as an advertisement of what
was over the fence.: I begin to find that
the problem of raising fruit is nothing —
to that of getting it after it has matured.
So long as the law, just in many re-
spects, is in force against shooting birds
and small boys, the gardener may sow in
tears and reap in vain. :
The power of a boy is, to me, some-
thing fearful. Consider what he can do.
You buy and set out a choice pear-
tree ; you enrich the earth for it; you
train and trim it, and vanquish the
borer, and watch its slow growth. At
length it rewards your care by produ-
- cing two or three pears, which you cut
up and divide in the family, declaring
the flavor of the bit you eat to be some:

.

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 159

thing extraordinary. The next year,
the little tree blossoms full, and sets
well: and inthe autumn has on its slen-
der, drooping limbs half a bushel of
fruit, daily growing more delicious in the
sun. You show it to your friends, read-
ing to them the French name, which you
can never remember, on the label; and
you take an honest pride in the success-
ful fruit of long care. That night your
pears shall be required of you by a boy!
Along comes an irresponsible urchin,
who has not been growing much longer
than the tree, with not twenty-five cents’
worth of clothing on him, and in five
minutes takes off every pear, and retires
into safe obscurity. In five minutes, the
remorseless boy has undone your work
of years, and with the easy nonchalance,
I doubt not, of any agent of fate, in
whose path nothing is sacred or safe.
And it is not of much consequence.

160 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

The boy goes on his way, — to Congress,
or to State Prison: in either place he
will be accused of stealing, perhaps
wrongfully. You learn, in time, that it
is better to have had pears and lost
them, than not to have had pears at all.
You come to know that the least (and
rarest). part of the pleasure of raising
fruit is the vulgar eating it. You
recall your delight in conversing with
the nurseryman, and looking at his il-
lustrated catalogues, where all the pears —
are drawn perfect in form, and of extra
size, and at that exact moment between
ripeness and decay which it is so impos-
sible to hit in practice. Fruit cannot be
raised on this earth to taste as you
imagine those pears would taste. For
years you have this pleasure, unalloyed
by any disenchanting reality. How you
watch the tender twigs in sprmg, and
the freshly-forming bark, hovering abeut

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 16)

the healthy growing tree with your
pruning-knife many a sunny morning!
That is happiness. Then, if you know
it, you are drinking the very wine of
life; and when the sweet juices of the
earth mount the limbs, and flow down
the tender stem, ripening and reddening
the pendent fruit, you feel that you
somehow stand at the source of things,
and have no unimportant share in the
processes of Nature. Enter, at this mo-
ment, boy the destroyer, whose office
is that of preserver as well; for, though
he removes the fruit from your sight, it
remains in your memory immortally ripe
and desirable. The gardener needs all

these consolations of a high philosophy.
11

Ie

162 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

EIGHTEENTH WEEK.

EGRETS are idle; yet history is

one long regret. Every thing
might have turned out so differently!
If Ravaillac had not been imprisoned
for debt, he would mot have stabbed
Henry of Navarre. If William of
Orange had escaped assassination by
Philip’s emissaries; if France had fol-
lowed the French Calvin, and embraced
Protestant Calvinism, as it came very
near doing towards the end of the six-
teenth century; if the Continental
ammunition had not given out at Bun-
ker’s Hill; if Blucher had not “ come
up” at Waterloo — the lesson is, that
things do not come up unless they are
planted. When you go behind the his- °

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 163

torical scenery, you find there is a rope
and pulley to effect every transforma-
tion which has astonished you. It was
the rascality of a minister and a con-
tractor five years before that lost the
battle; and the cause of the defeat was
worthless ammunition. I should like to
know how many wars have been caused
by fits of indigestion, and how many
more dynasties have been upset by the
love of woman than by the hate of
‘man. It is only because we are ill in-
formed that any thing surprises us;
‘and we are disappointed because we
expect that for which we have not pro-
vided. |

I had too vague expectations of what
my garden would do of itself. A
garden ought to produce one every
thing, —just as a business ought to sup-
port a man, and a house ought to keep
itself. We had a convention lately to

164 _ MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

resolve that the house should keep
itself; but it won’t. There has been a
lively time in our garden this summer;
but it seems to me there is very little to
show for it. It has been a terrible
campaign; but where is the indemnity ?

b)

Where are all “sass” and Lorrame?
.It is true that we have lived on the
country; but we desire, besides, the
fruits of the war. There are no onions,
for one thing. I am quite ashamed to
take people into my garden, and have
them notice the absence of onions. It
is very marked. In onion is strength;
and a garden without it lacks flavor.
The onion in its satin wrappings is
among the most beautiful of vegetables;
and it is the only one that represents
the essence of things. It can almost be
said to have asoul. You take off coat
after coat, and the onion is still there ;
and, when the last one is removed, who

~

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 165

dare say that the onion itself is de-
stroyed, though you can weep over its
departed spirit? If there is any one
thing on this fallen earth that the angels
in heaven weep over more than another,
it is the onion.

I know that there is supposed to be a
prejudice against the onion; but I
think there is rather a cowardice in
regard to it. I doubt not that all men
and women love the onion; but few
confess their love. Affection for it is
concealed. Good New-Englanders are
as shy of owning it as they are of talk-
ing about religion. Some people have
days on which they eat onions, — what
you might call “retreats,’ or their
“Thursdays.” The act is in the nature
of a religious ceremony, an Hleusinian
mystery: not a breath of it must get
abroad. On that day, they see no
company; they deny the kiss of greet-

166 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

ing to the dearest friend; they retire
within themselves, and hold communion
with one of the most pungent and pene-
tratmg manifestations of the moral
vegetable world. Happy is said to be
the family which can eat onions to-
gether. They are, for the time being,
separate from the world, and have a
harmony of aspiration. There is a hint
here for the reformers. Let them
become apostles of the onion; let them
eat, and preach it to their fellows, and
circulate tracts of it in the form of
seeds. In the onion is the hope of
universal brotherhood. If all men will
eat onions at all times, they will come
into a universal sympathy. Look at
Ttaly. I hope I am not mistaken as to
the cause of her unity. It was the
Reds who preached the gospel which
made it possible. All the Reds of
Kurope, all the sworn devotees of the

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 167

mystic Mary Ann, eat of the common
vegetable. Their oaths are strong with
it. It is the food, also, of the common
people of Italy. All the social atmos-
phere of that delicious land is laden
with it. Its odor is a practical democ-
racy. In the churches all are alike:
there is one faith, one smell. The
entrance of Victor Emanuel into Rome
is only the pompous proclamation of a
unity which garlic had already accom-
plished ; and yet we, who boast of our
democracy, eat onions in secret.

now see that I have left out many
of the most moral elements. Neither
onions, parsnips, carrots, nor cabbages
are here. I have never seen a garden
in the autumn before, without the un-
couth cabbage in it; but my garden
gives the impression of a garden with-
out ahead. The cabbage is the rose of
Holland. JIadmire the force by which it

168 MY. SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

compacts its crisp leaves into a solid
head. The secret of it would be price-
less to the world. We should see less
expansive foreheads with nothing within.
Even the largest cabbages are not always
the best. But I mention these things,
not from any sympathy I have with the
vegetables named, but to show how hard
it is to go contrary to the expectations
of society. Society expects every man
to have certain things in his garden.
Not to raise cabbage is as if one had no
pew in church. Perhaps we shall come
some day to free churches and free gar-
dens; when I can show my neighbor
through my tired garden, at the end of
the season, when skies are overcast, and
brown leaves are swirling down, and not
mind if he does raise his eyebrows when
he observes, “Ah! Isee you have none of
this, and of that.” At present, we want
the moral courage to plant only what we

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 169

need; to spend only what will bring us
peace, regardless of what is gomg on
over the fence. We are half ruined by
conformity ; but we should be wholly
ruined without it: and I presume [I shall

make a garden next year that will be as
| popular as possible. |

And this brings me to what I see may
be a crisis in life. I begin to feel the
temptation of experiment. Agriculture,
horticulture, floriculture,— these are vast
fields, into which one may wander away,
and never be seen more. It seemed to
me a very simple thing, this gardening ;
but it opens up astonishingly. It is
like the infinite possibilities in worsted-
work. Polly sometimes says to me, “I
wish you would call at Bobbin’s, and
match that skein of worsted for me when
you are in town.” Time was I used to
accept such a commission with alacrity
and self-confidence. Iwent. to Bobbin’s,

170 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

and asked one of his young men, with
easy indifference, to give me some of
that. The young man, who is as hand-
some a young man as ever | looked at,
and who appears to own the shop, and
whose: suave superciliousness would be
worth every thing to a cabinet minister
who wanted to repel applicants for
place, says, “I haven't an ounce: I have
sent to Paris, and I expect it every day.
Ihave a good deal of difficulty in cet
ting that shade in my assortment.” To
think that he is In. communication with
Paris, and perhaps with Persia! Re-
spect for such a being gives place to awe.
I go to another shop, holding fast to my
scarlet clew. There I am shown a heap
of stuff, with more colors and shades
than I had supposed existed in all the
world. What a blaze of distraction! I
have been told to get as near the shade
as I could ; and so I compare and con- )

-

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 171

trast, till the whole thing seems to me
about of one color. But I can settle my
mind on nothing. The affair assumes a
high degree of importance. Iam satis-
fied with nothing but perfection. I
don’t know what may happen if the
shade is not matched. I go to another
shop, and another, and another. At last
a pretty girl, who could make any cus-
tomer believe that green is_ blue,
matches the shade in a minute. I buy
five cents’ worth. That was the order.
Women are the most economical persons
that ever were. I have spent two hours
in this five-cent business; but who shall
say they were wasted, when I take the
stuff home, and Polly says it is a perfect
match, and looks so pleased, and holds it
up with the work, at arm’s-length, and
turns her head one side, and then takes
her needie, and works it in? Working in,
I can see, my own obligingness and

172 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

amiability with every stitch. Five cents
is dirt cheap for such a pleasure.

The things I may do in my garden
multiply on my vision. How fascmating
have the catalogues of the nurserymen
become! Can I raise all those beautiful
varieties, each one of which is prefera-
ble to the other? Shall I try all the
kinds of grapes, and all the sorts of
pears? I have already fifteen varieties
of strawberries (vines); and I have no
idea that I have hit the right one.
Must I subscribe to all the magazines
and weekly papers which offer premiums -
of the best vines? Oh that all the
strawberries were rolled into one, that I
could enclose all its lusciousness in one
bite! Oh for the good old days when
a strawberry was a strawberry, and there
was no perplexity about it! There are
more berries now than churches; and
no one knows what to believe. I have

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 173

seen gardens which were all experiment,
given over to every new thing, and
which produced little or nothing to the
owners, except the pleasure of expecta-
tion. People grow pear-trees at great
expense of time and money, which never
yield them more than four pears to the
tree. The fashions of ladies’ bonnets
are nothing to the fashions of nursery-
men. He who attempts to follow them
has a business for life; but his life may
be short. If I enter upon this wide
field of horticultural experiment, I shall
leave peace behind ; and I may expect
the ground to open, and swallow me and
all my fortune. May Heaven keep me
to the old roots and herbs of my fore-
fathers! Perhaps, in the world of mod-
ern reforms, this is not possible; but I
intend now to cultivate only the stand-
ard things, and learn to talk knowingly
of the rest. Of course, one must keep

174 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

up a reputation. I have seen people
greatly enjoy themselves, and elevate
themselves in their own esteem, in a
wise and critical talk about all the
choice wines, while they were sipping a
decoction, the original cost of which
bore no relation to the price of grapes.

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. iD

NINETEENTH WEEK.

HE closing scenes are not necessa-

rily funereal. A garden should
be got ready for winter as well as for
summer. When one goes into winter-
quarters, he wants every thing neat and
trig. Expecting high winds, we bring
every thing into close reef. Some men
there are who never shave (if they are
so absurd as ever to shave), except when
they go abroad, and who do not take
care to wear polished boots in the bosoms
of their families. I like a man who
shaves (next to one who doesn’t shave)
to satisfy his own conscience, and not for
display, and who dresses as neatly at
homeas he does anywhere. Such a man
will be likely to put his garden in com-

176 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

plete order before the snow comes, se
that its last days shall not present a scene
of melancholy ruin and decay.

I confess, that, after such an exhaust-
ing campaign. I felt a greft temptation
to retire, and cail it a drawn engage-
ment. But better counsels prevailed.
I determined that the weeds should not
sleep on the field of battle. 1 routed
them out, and levelled their works. lam
master of the situation. If I have made
a desert, I at least have peace; but it is
not quite a desert. The strawberries,
the raspberries, the celery, the turnips,

wave green above the clean earth, with
“no enemy in sight. In these golden
October days, no work is more fascinating
than this getting ready for sprmg. The
sun is no longer a burning enemy, but.a
friend, illuminating all the open space,
and warming the mellow soil. And the
pruning and clearing-away of rubbish,

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 177

and the fertilizing, go on with something
of the hilarity of a wake, rather than
the despondency of other funerals.
When the wind begins to come out of
the north-west of set purpose, and to
sweep the ground with low and search-
ing fierceness, very different from the
roystering, jolly bluster of early fall, I
have put the strawberries under their
coverlet of leaves, pruned the grape-
vines and laid them under the soil, tied
up the tender plants, given the fruit-
trees a good, solid meal about the roots ;
and so I turn away, writing Resurgam
on the gate-post. And Calvin, aware
that the summer is past and the harvest
is ended, and that a mouse in the kitchen
is worth two birds gone south, scampers
away to the house with his tail in the
air.

And yet I am not perfectly at rest in
my mind. I know that this is only a

12

178 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

truce until the parties recover their ex:
hausted energies. All winter long, the
forces of chemistry will be mustering
under ground, repairing the losses, call-
ing up the _ reserves, getting new
strength from my _ surface - fertilizing
bounty, and making ready for the spring
campaign. They will open it before I
am ready: while the snow is scarcely
melted, and the ground is not passable,
they will begin to move on my works; _
and the fight will commence. Yet how
deceitfully it will open to the music of
birds and the soft enchantment of the
spring mornings! I shall even be per-
mitted to win a few skirmishes: the
secret forces will even wait for me to
plant and sow, and show my full hand,
before they come on in heavy and de-
termined assault. There are already
signs of an internecine fight with the —
devil-grass, which has intrenched itself

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. . 179

in a considerable portion of my garden-
patch. It contests the ground inch by
inch; and digging it out is very much
such labor as eating a piece of choke-
cherry-pie with the stones all in. It is
work, too, that I know by experience I
shall have to do alone. Every man
must eradicate his own devil-grass. The
neighbors who have leisure to help you
in grape-picking time are all busy when.
devil-grass is most aggressive. My
neighbors’ visits are well timed: it is
only their hens which have all seasons
for their own.

I am told that abundant and rank
weeds are signs of a rich soil; but I
have noticed. that a thin, poor soil
grows little but weeds. I am inclined
to think that the substratum is the same,
and that the only choice in this world is
what kind of weeds you will have. 1
am not much attracted by the eaunt,

180 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

flavorless mullein, and the wiry thistle
of upland country pastures, where the
grass is always gray, as if the world were
already weary and sick of life. The
awkward, uncouth wickedness of remote
country-places, where culture has died
out after the first crop, is about as dis-
agreeable as the ranker and richer vice
of city life, forced by artificial heat and —
the juices of an overfed civilization.
There is no doubt, that, on the whole,
the rich soil is the best.: the fruit of it
has body and flavor. To what affluence
does a woman (to take an instance, thank
Heaven, which is common) grow, with
favoring circumstances, under the stim-
ulus of the richest social and intellec-
tual influences! I am aware that there
has been a good deal said in poetry
about the frmged gentian and the hare-
bell of rocky districts and waysides, and
I know that it is possible for maidens to

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 181

bloom in very slight soil into a wild-
wood grace and beauty; yet, the world
through, they lack that wealth of
charms, that tropic affluence of both
person and mind, which higher and more
stimulating culture brings:—the pas-
sion as well as the soul glowing in the
Cloth-of-Gold rose. Neither persons nor
plants are ever fully themselves until
they are cultivated to their highest. I,
for one, have no fear that society will be
too much enriched. The only question
is about keeping down the weeds; and
I have learned by experience, that we
need new sorts of hoes, and more dis-
position to use them.

Moral Deduction.— The difference be-
tween soil and society is evident. We
bury decay in the earth; we plant in it
the perishing ; we feed it with offensive
refuse: but nothing grows out of it that
is not clean; it gives us back life and

182 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

beauty for our rubbish. Society returns
us what we give it. .
Pretending to reflect upon these
things, but, in reality, watching the blue-
jays, who are pecking at the purple ber-
ries of the woodbine on the south gable,
I approach the house. Polly is picking
up chestnuts on the sward, regardless of
the high wind, which rattles them about
her head and upon the glass roof of her
winter-garden. The garden, I see, is
filled with thrifty plants, which will
make it always summer there. The cal-
las about the fountain will be in flower
by Christmas: the plant appears to
keep that holiday in her secret heart all
summer. I close the outer windows as
we go along, and congratulate myself
that we are ready for winter. For the
winter-garden I have no responsibility:
Polly has entire charge of it. I am
only required to keep it heated, and not

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 183

too hot either; to smoke it often for the
death of the bugs; to water it once a
day; to move this and that into the sun
and out of the sun pretty constantly :
but she does all the work. We never
relinquish that theory.

As we pass around the house, I dis
cover a boy in the ravine, filling a bag
with chestnuts and hickory-nuts. They
are not plenty this year; and I suggest
the propriety of leaving some for us.
_ The boy is a little slow to take the idea:
but he has apparently found the picking
-poor, and exhausted it; for, as he turns
away down the glen, he hails me with, — —

“‘ Mister, I say, can you tell me where
I can find some walnuts?”

The coolness of this world grows upon
me. It is time to go in and light a
wood-fire on the hearth.

ers

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