«• /X you know your toad, it is all right:' — Page 39.

AT TV

MY SUMMER

IN A GARDEN.

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER,

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY P.O. C. DARLEY

THIRTY-EIGHTH EDITION.

BOSTON:
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY.
|3rr^,

1888.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870,

•BY FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

PS

CAMBRIDGE : PRINTED AT THE RIVERSIDE PRESS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

[THE DRAWINGS BY F. O. C. DARLEY.]

PAG^

THE POLES HAD COME UP BEAUTIFULLY ... 24

LET US RESPECT THE CAT 60

HE BURST INTO TEARS 74

I TRIED THE SCARE-CROW PLAN 89

THE TOADS CAME OUT OF THEIR HOLES . . . 115

I TOLD THE MAN THAT I COULD NOT HAVE THE COW

IN THE GROUNDS 119

LOOKING FOR A LOST HEN 123

POLLY UNFOLDS A SMALL SCHEME OF BENEVOLENCE . 130

WHAT NICE ONES! 154

HE SAID HE WAS ONLY EATING SOME . . . .159

POLLY SAYS IT is A PERFECT MATCH . . . . 175

INTRODUCTORY LETTER.

'Y DEAR MR. FIELDS, — I did
promise 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 looks' 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 Intro-
duction is more apt to be a pillar, such as one

2 INTRODUCTORY LETTER.

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. There
is in that no formality, no assumption of func-
tion, 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 wis-
dom ; but writers might better be sent to the
spider, — not because he works all night, and
watches all day, but because he works uncon-
sciously. He dare not even bring his work
before his own eyes, but keeps it behind 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 work is born

INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 3

like a dream, that comes noiselessly, and tarries
silently, and goes as a bubble bursts. And yet
somewhere work must come in, — real, well-
considered work.

Inness (the best American painter of Nature
in her moods of real human feeling) once said,
" No man can do anything in art, unless he has
intuitions ; but, between whiles, one must work
hard in collecting the materials out of which
intuitions are made." The truth could not be
hit off better. Knowledge is the soil, and intui-
tions 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 under-
standing, in observing and considering the facts
of Nature, and in weaving curious analogies.
Being an editor of one of the oldest daily news-

4 INTRODUCTORY LETTER.

papers 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, affectations enough ;
criminal news, horrors enough ; fashion, more
than enough of vanity upon vanity, and 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 gar-
den letters began to blossom every week ; and
many hands were glad to gather pleasure from
them. A sign it was of wisdom. In our feverish
days it is a sign of health or of convalescence
that men love gentle pleasure, and enjoyments

INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 5

that do not rush or roar, but distil as the
dew.

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

Every book which interprets the secret lore of
fields and gardens, every essay that brings men
nearer to the understanding of the mysteries
which every tree whispers, every brook murmurs,
every weed, even, hints, is a contribution 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 presumption against their wisdom or his
goodness. Is the oak less strong and tough be-
cause the mosses and weather-stains stick in all

6 INTRODUCTORY LETTER.

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 tendency to repeat
the happiness from the simple 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 not be
given in book-form to your million readers, I
remain, yours to command in everything but
the writing of an Introduction,

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

BY WAY OF DEDICATION.

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 hon-
est sketches of experience for that aid which
the professional agricultural papers could not
give in the management of the little bit of gar-
den which she called her own. She may have
been rny only disciple ; and I confess that the

8 BY WAY OF DEDICATION.

thought of her yielding a simple faith to what a
gainsaying world may have regarded with levity
has contributed much to give an increased prac-
tical 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 occupations 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 mediaeval poisoning,

BY WAY OF DEDICATION. 9

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 hus-
band's zeal, that, in her absence in the country,
he had rooted up all 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 an-
other proof of the wide sweep of moral forces.
I suppose that it is as necessary 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

IO BY WAY OF DEDICATION.

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
garden ; but your suggestions have been invalu-
able, and, whenever used, have been paid for.
Your horticultural inquiries have been of a
nature to astonish the vegetable world, if it
listened, and were a constant inspiration to re-
search. 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 dis-
covery. What might have become of the gar-
den, 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 glances of approval, that
were none the worse for not being critical ; exer-
cising a sort of superintendence that elevated

BY WAY OF DEDICATION. II

gardening into a fine art ; expressing a wondei
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 light,
and now leaves upon it that tender play of
color and bloom which is called among the Alps

the after-glow.

C. D. W.

NOOK FARM, HARTFORD, October, 1870.

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

PRELIMINARY.

HE love of dirt is among the earliest
of passions, as it is the latest. Mud-
pies gratify one of our first and best
instincts. 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 busi-
ness, 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 the ground, and stay there. To own a bit
of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant

l6 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

seeds, and watch their renewal of life, — this is
the commonest delight of the race, the most sat-
isfactory thing a man can do. When Cicero
writes of the pleasures of old age, that of agri-
culture is chief among them : " Venio nunc ad
voluptates agricolarum, quibus ego incredibiliter
detector: qtice nee ulla impediuntur senectute, et
mild ad sapientis vitam proxime vidcntur acce-
dere" (I am driven to Latin because New York
editors have exhausted the English language in
the praising of spring, and especially 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 no-
bility ; 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. However small it is on the sur-

PRELIMINARY. 17

face, it is four thousand miles deep ; and that is a
very handsome property. And there is a great
pleasure in working in the soil, apart from the
ownership of it. The man who has planted a
garden feels that he has done something for the
good 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 let-
tuce or an ear of corn. One cultivates a lawn
even with great satisfaction ; for there is noth-
ing more beautiful than grass and turf in our
latitude. The tropics may have their delights ;
but they have not turf: and the world with-
out turf is a dreary desert. The original Gar-
den of Eden could not have had such turf as
one sees in England. The Teutonic races
all love turf: they emigrate in the line of its
growth.

To dig in the mellow soil — to dig moderately,
for all pleasure should be taken sparingly — is

B

1 8 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

a great thing. One gets strength out of the
ground as often as one really touches it with a
hoe. Antaeus (this is a classical article) was no
doubt an agriculturist ; and such a prize-fighter
as Hercules could n't do anything 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 con-
templatively rakes the warm and fragrant loam,
is better than much medicine. The buds are
coming out on the bushes round about; the
blossoms of the fruit-trees begin 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 flying and glancing and singing

PRELIMINARY. IQ

everywhere. To the open kitchen-door comes
the busy housewife to shake a white something,
and stands a moment to look, quite transfixed by
the delightful 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 charm-
ing olive-covered hills of Tivoli, Horace (not he
of Chappaqua) had a sunny farm : it was in sight
of Hadrian's villa, who did landscape-gardening
on an extensive scale, 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 hoeing and farming himself,
and that his verse is not all fraudulent sentiment.
In order to enjoy agriculture, you do not want
too much of it, and you want to be poor enough

20

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

to have a little inducement to work moderately
yourself. Hoe while it is spring, and enjoy the
best anticipations. It is not much matter if
things do not turn out well.

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GAR-
DENING.

FIRST WEEK.
NDER this modest title, I purpose to
write a series of papers, some of which
will be like many papers of garden-
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 hop-
ing that those who come after me, except tax-
gatherers and that sort of person, will find profit
in the perusal of my experience. As my knowl-
edge is constantly increasing, there is likely to
be no end to these papers. They will pursue
no orderly system of agriculture or horticul-

22 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

ture, but* range from topic to topic, according
to the weather and the progress of the weeds,
which may drive me from one corner of the
garden to the other.

The principal value of a private garden is not
understood. It is not to give the possessor vege-
tables and fruit (that can be better and cheaper
done by the market-gardeners), but to teach him
patience and philosophy, and the higher virtues,
— hope deferred, and expectations blighted, lead-
ing directly to resignation, and sometimes to
alienation. The garden thus becomes a moral
agent, a test of character, as it was in the begin-
ning. 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
lessons of life.

The first pleasant thing about a garden in this
latitude is, that you never know when to set it

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 23

going. If you want anything to come to matu-
rity early, you must start it in a hot-house. If
you put it out early, the chances are all in favor
of getting it nipped with frost ; for the thermom-
eter 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 anything early, you are doubtful whether
to desire to see it above ground, or not. If
a hot clay 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
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

24 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

high this 1 8th of May, and apparently 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 iSth 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 cutting 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 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, con-
sented. It occurred to me, when she had gone,

44 The poles had come up beautifully.'1'' — Page 24.

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 25

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 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.
2

26 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

The stalks seem to be biennial institutions ; and
as they get about their growth one year, ana
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
difficult 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.

SECOND WEEK.

'EXT to deciding when to start your
garden, the most important matter is,
what to put in it. It is difficult to
decide what to order for dinner on a given day :
how much more oppressive is it to order in a
lump an endless 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 vegetables, 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 (whatever his

28 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

sex, of course) to have a garden to his own self-
ish uses. He ought not to please himself, but
every man to please his neighbor. I tried to
have a garden that would give general moral
satisfaction. It seemed to me that nobody 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 potatoes " (the
very thing I wanted to avoid doing is buying
things). " What you want is the perishable
things that you cannot get fresh in the market"
— " But what kind of perishable things ? " A
horticulturist of eminence wanted me to sow
lines of strawberries and raspberries right over
where I had put my potatoes in drills. I had
about five hundred strawberry-plants in another
part of my garden ; but this fruit-fanatic wanted
me to turn my whole patch inco vines and run-

WHA1 1 KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 2(J

ners. I suppose I could raise strawberries
enougn for all my neighbors ; and perhaps I
ought to do it. I had a little space prepared
for melcns, — musk-melons, — which I showed
to an experienced friend. *' You are not £oing
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 melons. My family would rather
give up anything else in the garden than musk-
melons, — of the nutmeg variety. They are the
most grateful things we have on the table." So
there 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 little
late, so that they would, and they would n't. But
I had the same difficulty about string-beans

3<D MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

which I detest), and squash (which I tolerate),
and parsnips, and the whole round of green
things.

I have pretty much come to the conclusion
that you have got to put your foot down in gar-
dening. If I had actually 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 Ler plants with a
vigor and. freedom that I admire ; and the more
worthless the plant, the more rapid and splendid
its growth. She is at it early and late, and all
night ; never tiring, nor showing the least sign
of exhaustion.

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 31

•'* Eternal 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 gardening.
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 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 thriving

32 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

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. Somebody 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 dis-
gusted, 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 night, and sleep daytimes. Things ap-
pear to go on in the night in the garden uncom-
monly. 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-

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 33

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 locomotive ; and she generally makes one. I
am sometimes astonished to see how big a space
in a flower-bed her foot will cover. The rasp-
berries are called Doolittle. and Golden Cap. I
don't like the name of the first variety, and, if
they 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 mil-
dew, or rot on the bush. They are apt to John-
sonize, — rot on the stem. I shall watch the
Doolittles.

THIRD WEEK.

BELIEVE that I have found, if not
original sin, at least vegetable total de-
pravity in my garden ; and it was there
before I went into it. It is the bunch, or joint,
or snake-grass, — whatever it is called. As I do
not know the names of all the weeds and plants,
I have to do as Adam did in his garden, — n^me
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. Cut-
ting down and pulling up is what it thrives on.
Extermination rather helps it. If you follow a

WHAT J KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 35

slender white 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 somewhere, sending out dozens
of sharp-pointed, healthy shoots, every joint pre
pared 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. .
II 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 branch of them roots
somewhere ; and that you cannot pull out one
without making a general internal disturbance,

36 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

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 eradicate the net-
work 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 hoeing 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 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

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 3/

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 determination. 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 justice. I am an apos-
tle of Nature. This view of the matter lends a
dignity to the art of hoeing which nothing else
does, and lifts it into the region of ethics. Hoe-
ing becomes, not a pastime, but a duty. And
you get 'to regard it so, as the days and the
weeds lengthen.

38 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

Observation. — Nevertheless, what a man needs
in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in
it. The hoe is an ingenious instrument, cal-
culated 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 unpleasant in two ways. He bur-
rows in the ground so that you cannot find him,
and he flies away so that you cannot catch him.
He is rather handsome, as bugs go, but utterly
dastardly, in that he gnaws the stem of the plant
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 pa-
tiently watch for him. If you are spry, you can

WHAT 1 KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 39

annoy him. This, however, takes time. It takes
all day and part of the night. For he flieth in
darkness, and wasteth at noonday. 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 necessity 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 the most
intimate relations with the bug. It is a pleasure
to see such unity among the lower animals. The
difficulty 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 zoological 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."

FOURTH WEEK.

RTHODOXY is at a low ebb. Only
two clergymen accepted my offer to
come and help hoe my potatoes for
the privilege of using my vegetable total-deprav-
ity 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, however, sat and watched my
vigorous combats 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

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 4!

ran back and into the original organic bunch of
original sin within the man. The only other
clergyman who came was from out of town, — a
half Universalist, who said he would n'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
entirely rooted out with industry and patience.
I asked the Universalist-inclined man to take
my hoe and try it ; but he said he had n'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-
eral times, in its progress, I was tempted to do

42 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

as Adam did, who abandoned his garden on ac-
count 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 rejoicing
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
Sisyphus, or whoever it was, who let in the roots
of discord. I had pictured myself sitting at eve,
with my family, in the shade of twilight, contem-
plating a garden hoed. Alas ! it is a dream not
to be realized in this world.

My mind has been turned to the subject of
fruit and shade trees in a garden. There are
those who say that trees shade the garden too

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING, 43

much, and interfere with the growth of the
vegetables. 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. Whar 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 increased 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 com-
fortable 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
went off in a high wind. Another very good
way to do, and probably not so expensive 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

44 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

of the row with some cool and refreshing 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 hospit-
able entertainment at the end of the row. But I
never do. There is nothing to be 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

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 45

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 the weeds out of one
of her flower-becls. 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 agricultural influence), I am compelled
to say that this was rather helpless hoeing. It
was patient, conscientious, even pathetic hoeing ;
but it was neither effective nor finished. When
completed, the bed looked somewhat as if a hen

46 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

had scratched it : there was that touching un-
evenness 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 was n't nice ;
and I said it was. It was not a favorable time
for me to explain the difference between putter-
ing hoeing, and the broad, free sweep of the
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 con-
stituted, I think more of Polly's honest and
anxious care of her plants than of the most
finished gardening in the world.

FIFTH WEEK.

LEFT my garden for a week, just at the
close of the dry spell. A season of rain
immediately set in, and when I returned
the transformation was wonderful. In one week
every vegetable had fairly jumped forward. The
tomatoes which I left slender plants, eaten of
bugs and debating whether they would go back-
ward 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 Waterloo. The squashes — I will not
speak of the squashes. The most remarkable
growth was the asparagus. There was not a

48 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

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 obli-
gations. When I say that the asparagus had
grown six feet in seven days, I expect and wish
to be believed. I am a little particular about
the statement ; for, if there is any prize offered
for asparagus at the next agricultural 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 " : but I 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 ma-
nure heavily in the early spring, fork it in, and
top-dress (that sounds technical) with a thick
layer of chloride of sodium : if you cannot get

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 49

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 in them.
I know a lady, a member of the church, and a
very good sort of woman, considering the subject
condition of that class, who says that the weeds
work on her to that extent, that, in going through
her garden, she has the greatest difficulty in
keeping the ten commandments in anything 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 anything
which grows in my own garden) is the "pusley," 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
3 D

5O MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

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 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 neighbors, and I like chick-
ens ; but I do not think they ought to be united
near a garden. Neighbors' hens in your garden

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 51

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 jerky, 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 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 noth-
ing 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 gar-

52 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

den. 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 con-
stant dosing, paregoric, and soothing-syrups, 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 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 satisfaction
to us, that we have never, in the way of garden-
ing, disposed of even the humblest child unneces-
sarily. My plan would be to put them into Sun-
day schools more thoroughly, and to give the
Sunday schools an agricultural turn ; teaching
the children the sacredness of neighbors' vege- .

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING.

53

tables. I think that our Sunday schools do not
sufficiently impress upon children the danger,
from snakes and otherwise, of going into the
neighbors' gardens.

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 under-
standing that I am to be at liberty to speak
just as courteously of any other hoe which I
may receive. If I understand 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 recom-
mendation is shifted upon the wife of the editor
or clergyman. Polly says she is entirely willing
to make a certificate, accompanied with an affi-
davit, with regard to this hoe ; but her habit of

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 55

sitting about the garden-walk, on an inverted
flower-pot, while I hoe, somewhat destroys the
practical value of her testimony.

As to this hoe, I do 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 sleep-
less mornings, pains in the back, kleptomania
with regard to new weeders ; when I went into

56 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

my garden I was always sure to see something.
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 dis-
appeared. 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 vege-
tables, after the weeds are laid low, and must
hastily withdraw it, to avoid unpleasant results.
I make this explanation, because I intend to
put nothing into these agricultural papers that
will not bear the strictest scientific investiga-
tion ; nothing that the youngest child cannot
understand and cry for; nothing that the oldest

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 57

and wisest men will not need to study with
care.

I need not add that the care of a garden 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 ad-
vocate of the birds. I have rejoiced in their
multiplication. I have endured their concerts
at four o'clock in the morning without a mur-
mur. Let them come, I said, and eat the worms,
in order that we, later, may enjoy the foliage and
the fruits of the earth. We have a cat, a magnifi-
cent animal, of the sex which votes (but not a
pole-cat), — so large and powerful that, if he

3*

58 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

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 dissipation, 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 everything 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.

The other day I 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 delighted in the grow-

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 5Q

ing, the blowing, the podding ! What a touch-
ing 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
watchfulness. I looked about me on the face of
Nature. The wind blew from the 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 Calvin. (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 Cal-

6O MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

vin. I lavished upon him an enthusiastic fond-
ness. I told him that he had no fault ; that the
one action that I had called a vice was an heroic
exhibition of regard for my interests. I bade
him go and do likewise continually. I now saw
how much better instinct is than mere unguided
reason. Calvin knew. If he had put his opin-
ion into English (instead of his native cat-
alogue), it would have been : " You need not
teach your grandmother to suck eggs." It was
only the round of Nature. The worms eat a nox-
ious something in the ground. The birds eat the
worms. Calvin eats the birds. We eat — no,
we do not eat Calvin. There the chain stops.
When you ascend the scale of being, and come to
an animal that is, like ourselves, inedible, 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 rais-
ing peas. It occurs to me that I can have an

Let us respect the cat." — Page 60.

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 6l

iron pea-bush, a sort of trellis, through which
I could discharge electricity at frequent inter-
vals, and electrify the birds to death when they
alight : for they stand upon my beautiful 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 sug-
gests 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 accus-
tomed to seeing a person in poor clothes in the
garden to care much for that. Another neigh-
bor 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 com-
plete unity of action between the blast and the
birds. But, good neighbors, kind friends, I de-
sire that you will not increase, by talk, a disap-
pointment which you cannot assuage.

SEVENTH WEEK.

GARDEN is an awful responsibility.
You never know what you may be
aiding to grow in it. I heard a ser-
mon, not long ago, in which the preacher said
that the Christian, at the moment of his becom-
ing 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 illustration from my garden, especially as I
do not want to run the risk of propagating error,
and I do not care to give away these theological
comparisons to clergymen who make me so little

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 63

return in the way of labor. But I find, in dis-
secting a pea-blossom, that hidden in the centre
of it is a 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 orna-
ment. Maize and some other things show the
same precocity. This confirmation of the the-
ologic theory is startling, and sets me meditating
upon the moral possibilities of my garden. I
may find in it yet the cosmic egg.

And, speaking of moral things, I am half
determined to petition the (Ecumenical Council
to issue a bull of excommunication against " pus-
ley." 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
near, so that it bore nothing. In 1120 a bishop
of Laon excommunicated the caterpillars in his

64 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

diocese ; and, the following year, St. Bernard
excommunicated the flies in the Monastery of
Foigny ; and in 1510 the ecclesiastical court
pronounced 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
create such a good feeling ! I myself am very
fond of festivals. I always go, — when I can
consistently. Besides the 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 social reunions,

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 65

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 that
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 chari-
table object, — something that appeals to a vast
sense of something ; something that it will be
right to get up lotteries and that sort of thing
for. I suggest a festival for the benefit of my
garden ; and this seems feasible. In order to
make everything pass off pleasantly, invited
guests will bring or send their own strawberries
and cream, which I shall be happy to sell to

E

66 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

them at a slight advance. There are a great
many improvements which the garden needs ;
among them a sounding-board, so that the neigh-
bors' children can hear when I tell them to get
a little farther off from the currant-bushes. I
should also like a selection from the ten com-
mandments, in big letters, posted up conspicu-
ously, and a few traps, that will detain, but not
maim, for the benefit of those who cannot read.
But what is most important is, that the ladies
should crochet nets to cover over the straw-
berries. A good-sized, well-managed festival
ought to produce nets enough to cover my entire
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 sum-
mer goes on, with the inequality of man's fight

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 6/

with Nature ; especially in a civilized 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 get, without
raising any dust, or putting himself into ever-
lasting opposition. But the minute he begins to
clear a spot larger 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 vigilant, and
contests him at every step with all her ingenu-
ity and unwearied vigor. This talk of subduing
Nature is pretty much nonsense. I do not in-
tend to surrender in the midst of the summer
campaign, yet I cannot but think how much
more peaceful my relations would 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 freshness and

68 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

vigor, as if they had just thought of it for the
first time, and had not been cut down and
dragged out every other day since the snow
went off.)

We have got down the forests, and extermi-
nated savage beasts ; but Nature is no more sub-
dued than before : she only changes her tactics,
- uses smaller guns, so to speak. She re-en-
forces herself with a variety of bugs, worms, and
vermin, and weeds, unknown to the savage staje,
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 appreciate the value of frost and snow ;
for they give the husbandman a little peace, and
enable him, for a season, to contemplate his in-
cessant foe subdued. I do not wonder that the

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 69

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 I have been shaving it
like a barber. When it was soft, everything had
a tendency to go on to it, — cows, and especially
wandering hackmen. Hackmen (who are a pro-
duct 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, mined turf. The other morning, I
had just been running the mower over the lawn,
and stood regarding its smoothness, when I no-
ticed one, two, three puffs 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

70 MY SUMMER IN A GAKL

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 hack-
men did. He does not care how smooth it is.
He is constantly mining, and ridging it up. I
am not sure but he could be countermined. 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.

I do not speak of this mole in any tone of

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDEN!' 'Jl

complaint. He is only a part of the untiring
resources which Nature brings against the hum-
ble gardener. I desire to write nothing against
him which I should wish to recall at the last, —
nothing foreign to the spirit of that beautiful
saying of the dying boy, " He had no copy-book5
which, dying, he was sorry he had blotted."

EIGHTH WEEK.

Y 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 would
n't like to come down our way Sunday afternoon,
and take a plain, simple look at my garden, eat
a little lemon ice-cream and jelly-cake, and drink
a glass of native lager-bier. I thought of put-
ting up over my gate, " Welcome to the Nation's
Gardener " ; but I hate nonsense, and did n't do
it. I, however, hoed diligently on Saturday:
what weeds I could n't remove I buried, so that

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING 73

everything would look all right. The borders
of my drive were trimmed with scissors ; and
everything 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 President 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
surprised : 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 vegetable ; after which he seemed
more at his ease, and, in fact, delighted with
everything he saw. He was much interested in
my strawberry-beds, asked what varieties I had,
and requested me to send him some seed. He
4

74 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

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 impres-
sive 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
General 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 con-
cealed. Those who 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

" He burst into tears" — Page 74.

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 75

an excellent sort, " The Champion of England."
As quick as a flash he said, —

" Why don't you call them ' The Reverdy
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 ludicrous vegetable he knew. It
was nearly all leaf and blow, with only a sickly,
crook-necked fruit after a mighty fuss. It re-
minded him of the member of Congress from
; but I hastened to change the subject.

As we walked along, the keen eye of the
President rested upon some handsome sprays of
" pusley," which must have grown up since Sat-
urday night. It was most fortunate ; for it led
his Excellency to speak of the Chinese problem.
He said he had been struck with one coupling

76 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

of the Chinese and " pusley " in one of my agri-
cultural 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 " pusley "
was the natural food of the Chinaman, and that
where the " pusley " was there would the China-
man be also. For his part, he welcomed the
Chinese emigration : we needed the Chinaman
in our gardens to eat the " pusley " ; and he
thought the whole problem solved by this simple
consideration. To get rid of rats and " pusley,"
he said, was a necessity of our civilization. He
did not care so much about the shoe-business;
he did not think that the little Chinese shoes
that he had seen would be of service in the
army : but the garden-interest was quite another
affair. We want to make a garden of our whole
country : the hoe, in the hands of a man truly
great, he was pleased to say, was mightier than

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. ?/

the pen. He presumed that General 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 subject.

During our entire garden interview (operati-
cally speaking, the garden-scene), the President
was not smoking. I do not know how the im-
pression arose that he " uses tobacco in any
form " ; for I have seen him several times, and
he was not smoking. Indeed, I offered him a
Connecticut six ; but he wittily said that he did
not like a weed in a garden, — a remark which
I took to have a personal political bearing, and
changed the subject.

The President was a good deal surprised at
the method and fine appearance of my garden,
and to learn that I had the sole care of it. He

78 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

asked 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
anything 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 if—" The President
stopped me abruptly, and said it was unneces-
sary to repeat that remark : he thought he had
heard it before. Indeed, he deeply regretted
that he had ever made it. Sometimes, he said,
after hearing it in speeches, and coming across
it in resolutions, 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

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. /Q

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 understood him) the position of
head gardener 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 appoint-
ment. 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 General Gr — nt.

The President is a great talker (contrary to
the general impression) ; but I think he appre-

8O MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

ciated his quiet hour in my garden. He 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, 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 I 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.

^isjr^

NINTH WEEK.

AM more and more impressed with the
moral qualities of vegetables, and con-
template forming a science which shall
rank with comparative anatomy and compara-
tive philology, — the science of comparative
vegetable morality. We live in an age of pro-
toplasm. 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. I do not care to be seen much
with the squashes or the dead-beets. Fortu-

82 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

nately I can cut down any sorts 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 grace-
ful, 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. Suc-
cotash is vulgar. It is the bean in it. The
bean is a vulgar vegetable, without culture, or
any flavor of high society among vegetables.

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 83

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 inferior
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 con-
trast the celery with the potato. The associa-
tions 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 discovered the right way to do it. I
treat the potato just as I would a cow. I do
not pull them up, and shake them out, and de-
stroy them ; but I dig carefully at the side of
the hill, remove the fruit which is grown, leaving
the vine undisturbed : and my theory is, that it

84 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

will go on bearing, and submitting to my exac-
tions, 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 interesting study.
Lettuce is like 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
satisfactory and tender at the same time, and
whiter at the centre, and crisp in their maturity.
Lettuce, like conversation, requires a good deal
of oil, to avoid friction, and keep the com-
pany 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 anything, and the more things the better, into

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 8$

salad, as into a conversation ; but everything
depends upon the skill of mixing. I feel that I
anj 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 agree-
able parvenu. Of course, I have said nothing
about the berries. They live in another and
more ideal region ; except, perhaps, the currant.
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
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, searching for
protoplasm, is able to discover the tendency of
vegetables. It can only be found out by outward
observation. I confess that I am suspicious of
the bean, for instance. There are signs in it

86 MY SUMMER IN A GARI

of an unregulated life. I put up the most at-
tractive 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 strag-
gled 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.

\YHAT *I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 8?

Talk about the Darwinian theory of 'develop-
ment, and the principle of natural selection ! I
should like to see a garden let to run in accord-
ance with it. If I had left my vegetables and
weeds to a free fight, in which the strongest
specimens only should come to maturity, and
the weaker go to the wall, I can clearly see
that I should have had a pretty mess of it. It
would have been a scene of passion and license
and brutality. The " pusley " would have stran-
gled 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

88 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

family of children next door. Their power of
selection beats mine. If they could read half
as well as they can steal awhile away, I should
put up a notice, " Children, beware ! There is
Protoplasm here'' But I suppose it would have
no effect. I believe they would eat protoplasm
as quick as anything else, ripe or green. I won-
der if this is going to be a cholera-year. Con-
siderable 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
tendencies, 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.

" 1 tried the scare-crow flan." — Page

TENTH WEEK.

THINK I have discovered the way to
keep peas from the birds. I tried the
scarecrow plan, in a way which I
thought would outwit the shrewdest bird. The
brain of the bird is not large ; but it is all con-
centrated 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 imitation at once : the perfection of
the thing would show him that it was a trick.
People always overdo the matter when they at-
tempt deception. I therefore hung some loose
garments, of a bright color, upon a rake-head,

9<D MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

and set them up among the vines. The supposi-
tion 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 expectation that it would pass for
a man, and deceive a bird ; and he would thf re-
fore look for a deeper plot. I expected to c ut-
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 an-
other part of the garden were other peas, grow-
ing and blowing. To these I took good care not
to attract the attention of the bird by any scare-
crow whatever ! I left the old scarecrow con-

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 9 1

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. I am
convinced that this is the true use of a scare-
crow : it is 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 realized out of my pea-vines.

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

92 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

carelessly : " I am raising my own this year."
Whereas I have been wont to remark, " Your
vegetables look a little wilted this weather," I
now say, " What a fine lot of vegetables you Ve
got ! " When a man is not going to buy, he can
afford to be generous. To raise his own vege-
tables makes a person feel, somehow, more lib-
eral. I think the butcher is touched by the in-
fluence, and cuts off a better roast for me. The
butcher is my friend when he sees that I am not
wholly dependent on him.

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 own vegetables ; when everything on the
table is the product of my own labor, 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 at-

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 93

tractive. It is strange what a taste you sud-
denly 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 trans-
formed 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 when he says that we do not know
anything about women. Six thousand years is
as one day with them. I thought I had some-
thing to do with those vegetables. But when I
saw Polly seated at her side of the table, presid-
ing over the new and susceptible vegetables,
flanked by the squash and the beans, and smil-

94 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

ing 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 J
At length I said, —

" Polly, do you know who planted that squash,
or those squashes ? "

" James, I suppose."

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

"'We did."

" We did ! " I said in the most sarcastic man'
ner. " And I suppose we put on the sackcloth
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

WEIAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 95

I tell you, Polly," said I, uncorking the Bor-
deaux 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 discus-
sion, " I will say no more " is the most effective
thing you can close up with.

I am not an alarmist I hope I am as cool as
anybody this hot summer. But I am 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 everything. Woman
is one of the ablest and most cunning creatures

96 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

who have ever mingled in human affairs. I
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 mak-
ing laws. They want the power without the
responsibility. (Suppose my squash had not
come up, or my beans — as they threatened at
one time — had gone the wrong way : where
would I have been ? ) We are to be held to all
the responsibilities. Woman takes the lead in
all the departments, 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 vegetables. While we are being amused
by the ballot, woman is quietly taking things
into her own hands.

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 is a man ? A question frequently asked,
and never, so far as I know, satisfactorily an-
swered. 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 con-
tent which is happiness ? I do not mean lazi-
ness, which is always discontent ; but that se-
rene enjoyment, in whijh all the natural senses
have easy play, and the unnatural ones have
a holiday. There is probably nothing that has
S G

98 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

such a tranquillizing effect, and leads into such
content, as gardening. By gardening, I do not
mean that insane desire to raise vegetables
which some have ; but the philosophical occu-
pation of contact with the earth, and compan-
ionship with gently growing 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 anything, 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 trellis, which is similar to
that of the squirrel in running up a tree. We
all have something in our nature that requires
contact with the earth. In the solitude of gar-

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 99

den-labor, one gets into a sort of communion
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
moisture 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, con-
sumption, and every other disease, except sud-
den 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 high temperature,
which is delicious ; and, hot as it may be, a little

IOO . MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

breeze will come at intervals, which can be heard
in the tree-tops, and which is an unobtrusive
benediction. I hear a quail or two whistling in
the ravine ; and there is a good deal of fragmen-
tary conversation going on among the birds,
even on the warmest days. The companionship
of Calvin, also, counts for a good deal. He
usually attends me, unless I work too long in
one place ; sitting down on the turf, displaying
the ermine of his breast, and watching my move-
ments with great intelligence. He has a feline
and genuine love for the beauties of Nature, and
will establish himself where there is a good view,
and look on it for hours. He always accompa-
nies us when we go to gather the vegetables,
seeming to be desirous to know what we are to
have for dinner. He is a connoisseur in the
garden ; being fond of almost all the vegetables,
except the cucumber, — a dietetic hint to man.
I believe it is also said that the pig will not eat

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. IOI

tobacco. These are important facts. It is sin-
gular, however, 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 ani-
mal in the garden. I think the Agricultural
Society ought to offer a prize for the finest toad.
When Polly comes to sit in 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 prepared to in-

IO2 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

vestigate the cause of it. It is this habit of
observation, so cultivated, which has given him
such a trained mind, and made him so philo-
sophical. 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 plumb-
ers. They are the most agreeable men I know ;
and the boys in the business begin to be agreeable
very early. I suspect the secret of it is, that
they are agreeable by the hour. In the driest
days, my fountain became disabled : the pipe
was stopped up. A couple of plumbers, with
the implements of their craft, came out to view
the situation. . There was a good deal of differ-
ence of opinion 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 remarks were ex-

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 1 03

c?eedingly ingenious ; and their general observa-
tions on other subjects were excellent in their
way, and could hardly have been better if they
had been made by the job. The work dragged
a little, — as 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 comrade would await his
return with the most exemplary patience, and
sit down and talk, — always by the hour. I do
not know but it is a habit to have something
wanted at the shop. They seemed to me very
good workmen, and always willing to stop and
talk about the job, or anything else, when I went
near them. Nor had they any of that impetuous
hurry that is said to be the bane of our Ameri-
can civilization. To their credit be it said, that
I never observed anything of it in them. They

IO4 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

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 philosophi-
cal. 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: it is to work for
other people, never for yourself, and get your
pay by the hour. You then have no anxiety,
and little 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 effort, 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

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING.

105

I never heard one of them swear, or exhibit the
least impatience 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 !

TWELFTH WEEK.

R. HORACE GREELEY, the in-
troduction 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 in agriculture.
In politics, 1 do not dare to follow him ; but in
agriculture he is irresistible. When, therefore, I
find him advising Western farmers not to hill
up their corn, I think that his advice must be
political. You must hill up your corn. People
always have hilled up their corn. It would
take a constitutional amendment to change the
practice, that has pertained ever since maize was
raised. " It will stand the drought better," says

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. IO/

Mr. Greeley, " if the ground is left level." I
have corn in my garden,, ten and twelve feet
high, strong and lusty, standing the drought
like a grenadier ; and it is hilled. In advising
this radical 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
become too lazy -to hill my corn, I, too, shall go
into politics.

I am satisfied that it is useless to try to culti-
vate " pusley." I set 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 is a spirit of moral perversity in the plant,
which makes it grow the more, the more it is
interfered with. I am satisfied of that. I doubt
if any one has raised more " pusley " this year
than I have ; and my warfare with it has been

IO8 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

continual. Neither of us has slept much. If
you combat it, it will grow, to use an expression
that will be understood by many, like the devil.
I have a neighbor, a good Christian man, be-
nevolent, 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 entire ground covered with a
thick and luxurious carpet of " pusley," with a tur-
nip-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. I wish there
was more demand in our city markets for " pus-
ley " as a salad. I can recommend it.

It does not take a great man to soon discover
that, in raising anything, the greater part of the
plants goes into stalk and leaf, and the fruit is a
most inconsiderable portion. I plant and hoe a
hill of corn : it grows green and stout, and waves

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. ICX)

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 dis-
port itself in the summer 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 pro-
duced. I do not complain of this. One cannot
expect vegetables to be better than men : and
they make a great deal of ostentatious 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 cheer-
ful in comparison.

IIO MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

One of the minor pleasures of life is that of
controlling vegetable activity and aggressions
with the priming-knife. Vigorous and rapid
growth is, however, a necessity to the sport.
To prune feeble plants and shrubs is like act-
ing 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, thrift}/
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, by the way, the pleasure of the
jockey in setting up the tail of the horse arti-
ficially. 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

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. I I I

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 per-
petual attendance at a funeral, and puts one in
low spirits. I want to have a garden and or-
chard rise up and meet me every morning, with
the request to "lay on, MacdufT." 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 ex-
pected to say something about 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-
tilize 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 chemistry in particular. You must have a
knowledge of soils, must have your soil analyzed,

112 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

and then go into a course of experiments to find
what it needs. It needs analyzing, — that, I am
clear about: everything needs that. You had
better have the soil analyzed before you buy : if
there is " pusley " in it, let it alone. See if it is
a soil that requires much hoeing, and how fine it
will get if there is no rain for two months. But
when you come to fertilizing, if I understand the
agricultural authorities, you open a pit that will
ultimately swallow you up, — farm and all. It
is the great subject of modern times, how to
fertilize 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 fertilizing are not
agreeable. Michael Angelo, who tried every
art, and nearly every trade, never gave his mind
to fertilizing. It is much pleasanter and easier
to fertilize with a pen, as the agricultural writers

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING.

II

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
gardeners, " Fertilize, fertilize, fertilize ' "

THIRTEENTH WEEK.

FIND that gardening has unsurpassed
advantages for the study of natural his-
tory ; 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 eve alone has 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 misunderstood. Why,
as an illustration, are toads so plenty after a

The toads came out of their holes" — Page 115.

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. I 1 5

thunder-shower ? 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, especially little ones,
hop about on the gravel-walks ? For many
years, I believed that they rained down ; and I
suppose many people think so still. They are
so small, and they come in such numbers only
in the shower, that the supposition is not a vio-
lent one. " Thick as . toads after a shower," is
one of our best proverbs. I asked an explana-
tion of this of a thoughtful woman, — indeed, a
leader in the great movement to have all the
toads hop in any direction, without any distinc-
tion 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 discovered
that they come out not to get water. I deluged
a dry flower-bed, the other night, with pailful
after pailful of water. Instantly the toads came

Il6 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN

out of their holes in the dirt, by tens and twen-
ties 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 draw-
ings of the water and the toads, are at the ser-
vice of the distinguished 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 oblit-
erate 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 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 in my garden ; knew

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. I I/

her gait and the size of her feet, which struck
me as a little large for the size of the body. Hav-
ing 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,
therefore, to keep the grass nicely cut, and to
keep his cow at home. I waited some time after
the grass needed cutting ; and, as my neighbor
did not appear, 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 evi-
dently been waiting that opportunity. When
the grass grew again, the neighbor did not ap-
pear with his scythe ; but one morning I found
the cow tethered on the sward, hitched near 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 mowing to

Il8 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

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,
excommunicated, and lost. It is a most distress-
ing 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 responsible for the cow's
voice. I then told him to take her away ; and
he did, at intervals, shifting her to different parts
of the grounds in my absence, so that the deso-
late voice would startle us from unexpected quar-
ters. If I were to unhitch the cow, and turn her
loose, I knew where she would go. If I were to
lead her away, the question was, Where ? for
I did not fancy leading a cow about till I could

/ told the man that 1 could not have the cow in the grounds"
Page 119.

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 119

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 abomi-
nable voice. I told the man that I could not
have the cow in the grounds. He said, " All
right, boss " ; but he did not go away. I asked
him to clear out. The man, who is a French
sympathizer from the Republic of Ireland, kept
his temper perfectly. He said he was n't doing
anything, just feeding his cow a bit : he would
n'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 everything that I said, and kept on feeding his
cow. Before I got him to go to fresh scenes and

I2O MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

pastures new, the Sabbath was almost broken :
but it 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. I can recommend this cow, if any-
body 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.

I think I have said that we have a game-pre-
serve. We keep quails, or try to, in 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 piping. Be-
sides, although I appreciate toads and cows, and
all that sort of thing, I like to have a game-pre-
serve more in the English style. And we did.
For in July, while the game-law was on, and the

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 121

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 at-
tention to war declared at that time in the morn-
ing, I went to sleep again. But the occurrence
was repeated, — and not only early in the morn-
ing, but at night There was calling of dogs,
breaking down of brush, and firing of guns. It
is hardly pleasant to have guns fired in the di-
rection 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 damozel ") flew to another window, — •

" The blessed damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of heaven," —
6

122

IN A GARDEN.

"Bespoke as when

.

Stun& by this inquirv T ,
window till 6aned °"t of the

Halloo, there!

.

another tack. 6n^ SoinS on

" Looking for a lost hen.'1'' — Page 123.

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 123

likely, to shoot a gentleman in his own house,
with bird-shot, so long as quails were to be had.

" You have no business here : what are you
after ? " I repeated.

" Looking for a lost hen," said the man as 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 came in sight
of the hunter as he was retreating down the
road. He came to a halt ; and we had some
conversation in a high key. Of course I threat-
ened 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 could n't see his face, never occurred to me.
(I remember, now, that a farmer once proposed
to prosecute me when I was fishing in a trout-

124 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

brook on his farm, and asked my 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
gun 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 having a
game-preserve attached to your garden : it
makes life too lively.

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 delicious 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 did n't ask for it. I went
out with a hoe ; but the serene sweetness dis-
arms me Thrice is he armed who has a long-
handled hoe, with a double blade. Yet to-day
I am almost ashamed to appear in such a bel-

126 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

ligerent fashion, with this terrible mitrailleuse
of gardening.

The tomatoes are getting tired of ripening,
and are beginning to go into a worthless con-
dition,— green. The cucumbers cumber the
ground, — great yellow, over-ripe objects, no
more to be compared 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 delicate 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 peo-
ple are ripe by their willingness to let go. Rich-
ness and ripeness are not exactly the same.
The rich are apt to hang to the stem with
tenacity. I have nothing against the rich. If
I were not virtuous, I should like to be rich.
But we cannot have everything, as the man said

\\HAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. I2/

when he was down with small-pox and cholera,
and the yellow-fever came into the neighbor-
hood.

Now, the grapes, soaked in this liquid gold,
called air, begin to turn, mindful of the injunc-
tion, " 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 is, 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 explosive bul-
lets, that should explode in the stomach : the
vine would make such a nice border for the gar-
den, — a masked battery of grape. The pears,
too, are getting russet and heavy ; and here and
there amid the shining leaves one gleams as
ruddy as the cheek of the Nutbrown Maid.

128 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

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 contentment, that I have small desire
to disturb her. She is chewing my cud as if it
were hers. Well, eat on and chew on, melan-
choly brute. I have not the heart to tell the
man to take you away : and it would do no good
if I had ; he would n't do it. The man has not
a taking way. Munch on, ruminant creature.
The frost will soon come ; the grass will be
brown. I will be charitable while this blessed
lull continues : for our benevolences must soon
be turned to other and more distant objects, —
the amelioration of the condition of the Jews,
the education of theological young men in the
West, and the like.

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 129

I do not know that these appearances are de-
ceitful ; 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 ; nearly al-
ways, 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.

" If I could n'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 preparing a bed for a sowing of turnips, —
not that I like turnips in the least ; but this is
the season to sow them. Polly comes out, and
extemporizes her usual seat to "consult me"
6*

130 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

about matters while I work. I well know that
something is coming.

" This is a rotation of crops, is n't it ? "

" Yes : I have rotated the gone-to-seed lettuce
off, and expect to rotate the turnips in ; it is a
political fashion."

" Is n't it a shame that the tomatoes are all
getting ripe at once ? What a lot of squashes !
I wish we had an oyster-bed. Do you want me
to help you any more than I am helping ? "

" No, I thank you." (I wonder what all this
is about ?)

" Don't you think we could sell some straw-
berries next year ? "

" By all means, sell anything. We shall no
doubt get rich out of this acre."

"Don't be foolish."

And now !

" Don't you think it would be nice to have
a ? " — And Polly unfolds a small scheme of

£SB

S'^i^^jivo
^ -~^\ _>>'

unfolds a small scheme of benevolence:'1 — Page 130.

\VHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 13!

benevolence, which is not quite enough to break
me, and is really to be executed in an economical
manner. " Would n't that be nice ? "

" O yes ! And where is the money to come
from?"

" I thought we had agreed to sell the straw-
berries."

" Certainly. But I think we would make
more money if we sold the plants now."

" Well," said Polly, concluding the whole mat-
ter, " 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 mercenary
thought can ruffle my mind as I rake off the
loamy bed. I notice, however, 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

132 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

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 I sup-
posed 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 everything was fresh and vigorous.
It beats me — Nature does. I doubt not, that,
if I were to leave my garden now for a week, it
would n'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

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING.

133

others of us in the garden rest and sit in com-
fort a moment, upon the summit of the summer,
it is as rampant and vicious as ever. It accepts
no armistice.

FIFTEENTH WEEK.

T 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 para-
dise, 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

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 135

of apparently 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 absence. Every one of
them had sent out as many scarlet runners as an
Indian tribe has. Some of them had blos-
somed ; 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 prop-
agate, themselves both by seeds and roots, and
make sure of immortality in some way. Even
the Colfax variety was as ambitious as the
others. After having seen the declining letter

136 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

of Mr, Colfax, I did not suppose that this vine
would run any more, and intended to root it
out. But one can never say what these politi
cians 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 bedfellows.

But another enemy had come into the straw-
berries, 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 Sunday, year after year, shrink from speak-
ing of sin ? I refer, of course, to the greatest
enemy of mankind, " p-sl-y." The ground was

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 137

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 " pusley," we can
beat the world.

I had no idea, untij recently, how generally
this simple and thrifty plant iz feared and hated.
Far beyond what I had regarded as the bounds
of civilization, it is held as one of the mysteries
of a fallen world ; accompanying the home mis-
sionary on his wanderings, and preceding the
footsteps of the Tract 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

I3& MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN

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 op-
portunity 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 woods. It was a scene
upon which one would think no thought of sin
could enter. We were talking with old Phelps,
the guide. Old Phelps is at once guide, phi-
losopher, and friend. He knows the woods and
streams and mountains, and their savage inhabi-
tants, as well as we know all our rich relations.

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 139

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 subjects about
which rational men are interested, — bears,
panthers, trapping, the habits of trout, the
tariff, the internal revenue (to wit, the injustice
of laying such a tax on tobacco, and none on
dogs : " There ain't no dog in the £/hited States,"
says the guide, at the top of his voice, "that
earns his living"), the Adventists, the Corner
Grat, Horace Greeley, religion, the propagation
of seeds in the wilderness (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 ;

I4O MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

and why does a growth of oak-trees always
come up after a growth of pine has been re-
moved ?) • — 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 me ! "

" What 's that ? " we asked with undisguised
curiosity.

" That 's ' pusley ' ! " he replied, in the tone of
a man who has come to one 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 midnight, hushed by the sound of
the stream and the rising wind in the spruce-

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 14!

tops. Then man can go nowhere that "pusley"
will not attend him. Though he camp on the
Upper An 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, 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 limitations, and that
there has been a natural boundary set to his
individual powers. As he 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

142 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

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.

I have been digging my potatoes, if anybody
cares to know it. I planted them in what are
called " Early Rose," — the rows a little less
than three feet apart ; but the vines came to
an early close in the drought. Digging pota-
toes 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, com-
pared with what we might be ! We don't
plough deep enough, any of us, for one thing.
I shall 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

WHAT 1 KNOW ABOUT GARDENING.

143

pleasure in turning out the brown-jacketed fel-
lows 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 un-
pleasant part of it.

SIXTEENTH WEEK.

DO not hold myself bound to answer
the question, Does gardening pay ? It
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 commandments :
I therefore yield to popular clamor when I dis-
cuss the profit of my garden.

As I look at it, you might as well ask, Does a
sunset pay ? I know that a sunset is commonly

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 145

looked on as a cheap 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, including
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 digestible ; and the cost
of a fair education, extended, perhaps, through
generations in which sensibility and love of
beauty grew. What I mean is, that if a man
is hungry and naked, and half a savage, or with
the love of beauty undeveloped 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 anything in our civilization.

Of course there is no such thing as absolute
7 J

146 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

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. It is as you like it. In a certain sense, it
is a sort of profanation to consider if my garden
pays, or to set a money-value upon my delight in
it. I fear that you could not put it in money.
Job had the right idea in Jiis mind when he
asked, " Is there any taste in the white of an
egg ? " Suppose there is not ! What ! shall I
set a price upon the tender asparagus or the
crisp lettuce, which made the sweet spring a
reality ? Shall I turn into merchandise the red
strawberry, the pale green pea, the high-flavored
raspberry, the sanguinary beet, that love-plant
the 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

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 147

at last with the engaging bean in a pool of suc-
cotash ? 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 gardening, the potato.
In my statement, I shall not include the interest
on the value of the land. I throw in the land,
because it would otherwise have stood idle : the
thing generally raised on city land is taxes. I
therefore make the following statement of the
cost and income of my potato-crop, a part of
it estimated in connection with other garden

148 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

labor. I have tried to make it so as to satisfy
the income-tax collector : —

Dr.

Ploughing $ 0.50

Seed 1.50

Manure 8.00

Assistance in planting and digging, 3 days 6.75

Labor of self in planting, hoeing, digging,

picking up, 5 days at 17 cents .85

Total cost $ 17.60

Cr.

Two thousand five hundred mealy potatoes, at

2 cents $ 50.00

Small potatoes given to neighbor's pig 50

Total return 5°-5°

Balance, profit in cellar 32-9°

Some of these items need explanation. I
have charged nothing for my 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 anything for cooling drinks while hoeing.
I leave this out from principle, because I al-

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 149

ways 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 opportunity
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 labor. 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 masons
did who worked for me at four dollars a day.
They lay in the shade and slept the sleep of
honest toil full 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 deferred putting
a value on the potatoes until I had footed up the

15O MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

debit column. This is always the safest way to
do. I had twenty-five bushels. I roughly esti-
mated 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. If any one
thinks that two cents each is high, let him try to
raise them.

Nature is " awful smart." I intend to be com-
plimentary in saying so. She shows it in little
things. I have mentioned my attempt to put
in a few modest turnips, near the close of the
season. I sowed the seeds, by the way, in 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

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. l$l

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. Af-
ter all, I 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 grasping for too much. The Scotch say, that
no man ought to thin out his own turnips, be-
cause he will not sacrifice enough to leave room
for the remainder to grow : h „ should get his
neighbor, who does not care for the plants, to
do it. But this is mere talk, and aside from the
poirt : if there is anything I desire to avoid in
these agricultural papers, it is digression. I did
think that putting in these turnips so late in the
season, when general activity has ceased, and in
a remote part of the garden, they would pass
unnoticed. 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,

152 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

which seemed to have been born and held ir>
reserve for this purpose, — to cut the leaves.
They speedily made lace-work of the whole bed.
Thus everything appears to have its special ene-
my, — except, perhaps, p y : nothing ever

troubles that.

Did the Concord Grape ever come to more
luscious perfection than this year ? or yield so
abundantly ? The golden sunshine has passed
into them, and distended their purple skins al-
most to bursting. Such heavy clusters ! such
bloom ! such sweetness ! such meat and drink
in their round globes ! What a fine fellow Bac-
chus 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

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 153

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 companion, at the foot of the ladder,
before dropping it into the basket. But we 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 number, 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
7*

154 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN

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, 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 people would be generous from selfish mo-
tives, if they had the opportunity.

Philosophical Observation. — Nothing shows
one who his friends are like prosperity 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.

" What nice ones ! " — Page 154.

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. I 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 September 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 supply into the sys-
tem. 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

156 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

day when the superfluous sunshine will be util-
ized ; as, for instance, that which has burned
up my celery this year will be converted into
a force to work the garden.

This sitting 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 am-
munition, and stacked arms in a slovenly, militia
sort of style. The ground vines are torn, tram-
pled, and withered ; and the ungathered cucum-
bers, worthless melons, 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 Fisher after the
capture. So the great grassy meadow at Mu-

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 157

nich, any morning during the October Fest,
is strewn with the empty beer-mugs. History
constantly repeats itself. There is a large crop
of moral reflections in my garden, which any-
body is at liberty to gather who passes this
way

I have tried to get in anything 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, I am to blame for leaving
out a few winter-pears, which some predatory
boy carried off on Sunday. 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 should n't have known
what to do with him. The chances are, that
he would have escaped away with his pockets
full, and jibed at me from a safe distance. And,

158 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

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 him
with grapes, showing him the enormity of his
offence, I suppose he would have come the
next night, and taken the remainder 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 watermelons, he
is universally denounced as a stingy old mur-
derer by the community. A great many people
regard growing fruit as lawful prey, who would
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 dishful to ripen. Upon inquiring what he

He said he -was only eating some." — Page 159.

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 159

was about, he said he was only eating some ;
and the operation seemed to be so natural 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 prac-
tice 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 barba-
rians. 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 vices of a primitive people.
It is held by some naturalists that the child
is only a zoophyte, with a stomach, and feelers
radiating from it in search of something to fill
it. It is true that a child is always hungry all
over : but he is also curious all over ; and his

l6o MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

curiosity is excited about as early as his hunger.
He immediately begins to put out his moral
feelers into the unknown and the infinite 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 superstitious, and open to
all wonder. In this, he is exactly like the sav-
age races. Both gorge themselves on the mar-
vellous ; and all the unknown is marvellous to
them. I know the general impression is that
children must be governed through their stom-
achs. I think they can be controlled quite as
well through their curiosity ; that being the
more craving and imperious of the two. I
have seen children follow about a person who
told them stories, and interested them with his

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. l6l

charming talk, as greedily as if his pockets had
been full of bon-bons.

Perhaps this fact has no practical relation 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 trousers
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 was too late for him to climb into the
garden ? I don't know. Human nature is vi-
cious. The boy might regard the picture of the
garden of the Hesperides only as an advertise-
ment 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 respects, is in

102 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

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, something
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 van-
quish the borer, and watch its slow growth.
At length it rewards your care by producing
two or three pears, which you cut up and divide
in the family, declaring the flavor of the bit
you eat to be something extraordinary. The
next year, the little tree blossoms full, and sets
well ; and in the autumn has on its slender,
drooping limbs half a bushel of fruit, daily
growing more delicious in the sun. You show
it to your friends, reading to them the French
name, which you can never remember, on the
label ; and you take an honest pride in the
successful fruit of long care. That night ycur

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 163

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. 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 illus-

164 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

trated catalogues, where all the pears are drawn
perfect in form, and of extra size, and at that
exact moment between ripenesss and decay
which it is so impossible 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 disen-
chanting reality. How you watch the tender
twigs in spring, and the freshly forming bark,
hovering about 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 moment boy the destroyer, whose
office is that of preserver as well ; for, though

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING.

1 65

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.

EIGHTEENTH WEEK.

EGRETS are idle ; yet history is one
long regret. Everything might have
turned out so differently ! If Ravail-
lac had not been imprisoned for debt, he would
not have stabbed Henry of Navarre, If Wil-
liam of Orange had escaped assassination by
Philip's emissaries ; if France had followed the
French Calvin, and embraced Protestant Cal-
vinism, as it came very near doing towards the
end of the sixteenth century ; if the Continen-
tal ammunition had not given out at Bunker's
Hill ; if Blucher had not " come up " at Water-
loo, — the lesson is, that things do not come up
unless they are planted. When you go behind

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. l6/

the historical scenery, you find there is a rope
and pulley to effect every transformation which
has astonished you. It was the rascality of a
minister and a contractor 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 anything surprises us ; and we are
disappointed because we expect that for which
we have not provided.

I had too vague expectations of what my
garden would do of itself. A garden ought to
produce one everything, — just as a business
ought to support a man, and a house ought
to keep itself. We had a convention lately to
resolve that the house should keep itself; but
it won't. There has been a lively time in our

1 68 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

garden this summer ; but it seems to me there
is very little to show for it. It has been a ter-
rible campaign ; but where is the indemnity ?
Where are all " sass " and Lorraine ? 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 beauti-
ful of vegetables ; and it is the only one that
represents the essence of things. It can al-
most be said to have a soul. You take off coat
after coat, and the onion is still there ; and,
when the last one is removed, who dare say
that the onion itself is destroyed, though you
can weep over its departed spirit ? If there is
any one thing on this fallen earth that the angels

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 169

in heaven weep over more than another, it is the
onion.

I know that there is supposed to be a preju-
dice 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 con-
cealed. Good New-Englanders are as shy of
owning it as they are of talking 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 Eleusinian mys-
tery ; not a breath of it must get abroad. On
that day they see no company ; they deny the
kiss of greeting to the dearest friend ; they
retire within themselves, and hold communion
with one of the most pungent and penetrating
manifestations of the moral vegetable world
Happy is said to be the family which can eat

I/O MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

onions together. They are, for the time being,
separate from the world, and have a harmony of
aspiration. There is a hint here for the reform-
ers. 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 Italy.
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 Eu-
rope, all the sworn devotees of the 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 democracy. In the
churches all are alike : there is one faith, one
smell. The entrance of Victor Emanuel into

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. I /I

Rome is only the pompous proclamation of a
unity which garlic had already accomplished ;
and yet we, who boast of our democracy, eat
onions in secret.

I 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 uncouth cabbage in it; but my garden
gives the impression of a garden without a
head. The cabbage is the rose of Holland. I
admire the force by which it compacts its crisp
leaves into a solid head. The secret of it would
be priceless 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 sym-
pathy I have with the vegetables named, but to
show how hard it is to go contrary to the expec-
tations of society. Society expects every man

1/2 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

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 gardens ; when I can show my neighbor
through my tired garden, at the end of the sea-
son, when skies are overcast, and brown leaves
are swirling down, and not mind if he does raise
his eyebrows when he observes, " Ah ! I see
you have none of this, and of that." At pres-
ent we want the moral courage to plant only
what we need ; to spend only what will bring
us peace, regardless of what is going 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, floricul-
ture, — these are vast fields, into which one may

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 173

wander away, and never be seen more. It
seemed to me a very simple thing, this garden-
ing ; 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. I went to Bobbin's, and asked
one of his young men, -with easy indifference, to
give me some of that. The young man, who is
as handsome a young man as ever I 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 have n't an
ounce : I have sent to Paris, and I expect it
every day. I have a good deal of difficulty in
getting that shade in my assortment." To think
that he is in communication with Paris, and

1/4 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

perhaps with Persia ! Respect for such a being
gives place to awe. I go to another shop, hold-
ing 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 contrast, 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. I am satisfied 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 customer 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

Polly says it is a perfect match." — Page 175.

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 1/5

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 needle, and
works it in ? Working in, I can see, my own
obligingness and 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 fascinating have the cata-
logues of the nurserymen become ! Can I raise
all those beautiful varieties, each one of which
is preferable 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 mag-
azines and weekly papers which offer premiums
of the best vines ? O that all the strawberries
were rolled into one, that I could enclose all
its lusc.iousness in one bite J O for the good old

MY SUMMER IN A GAR'JFN.

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 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 expectation.
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 forefathers !
Perhaps in the world of modern reforms this
is not possible ; but I intend now to cultivate

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING.

177

only the standard things, and learn to talk
knowingly of the rest. Of course, one must
keep 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.

NINETEENTH WEEK.

HE closing scenes are not necessarily
funereal. A garden should be got
ready for winter as well as for sum-
mer. When one goes into winter-quarters he
wants everything neat and trig. Expecting
high winds, we bring everything into close
reef. Some men there are who never shave
(if they are so absurd as ever to shave), ex-
cept 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 does n't shave) to satisfy his
own conscience, and not for display, and who
dresses as neatly at home as he does anywhere.

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 1/9

Such a man will be likely to put his garden in
complete order before the snow comes, so that
its last days shall not present a scene of melan-
choly ruin and decay.

I confess that, after such an exhausting cam-
paign, I felt a great temptation to retire, and
call it a drawn engagement. But better coun-
sels prevailed. I determined that the weeds
should not sleep on the field of battle. I
routed them out, and- levelled their works. I
am 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 spring. The sun is no
longer a burning enemy, but a friend, illuminat-
ing all the open space, and warming the mellow
soil. And the pruning and clearing-away of

l8O MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

rubbish, and the fertilizing, go on with some-
thing of the hilarity of a wake, rather than
the despondency of other funerals. When the
wind begins to come out of the northwest of
set purpose, and to sweep the ground with low
and searching fierceness, very different from the
roystering, jolly bluster of early fall, I have put
the strawberries under their coverlet of leaves,
pruned the grapevines 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 truce until the parties
recover their exhausted energies. All wintei

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. l8l

long the forces of chemistry will be mustering
under ground, repairing the losses, calling up
the reserves, getting new strength from my sur-
face-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 com-
mence. Yet how deceitfully it will open to the
music of birds and the soft enchantment of the
spring mornings ! I shall even be permitted 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 determined assault. There are already
signs of an internecine fight with the devil-
grass, which has intrenched itself in a con-
siderable portion of my garden-patch. It con-
tests the ground inch by inch ; and digging it
out is very much such labor as eating a piece

1 82 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

of choke-cherry pie with the stones all in. It
is work, too, that I know by experience I snail
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. I am not
much attracted by the gaunt, 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 awk-
ward, uncouth wickedness of remote country-
places, where culture has died out after the

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 183

first crop, is about as disagreeable 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 com-
mon) grow, with favoring circumstances, under
the stimulus of the richest social and intellec-
tual influences! I- am aware that there has
been a good deal said in poetry about the
fringed gentian and the harebell of rocky dis-
tricts and waysides, and I know that it is pos-
sible for maidens to 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 passion as well as the soul glowing
in the Cloth-of-Gold rose. Neither persons nor

184 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

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 disposi-
tion to use them.

Moral Deduction. — The difference between
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
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 berries 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

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 185

head and upon the glass roof of her winter-gar-
den. The garden, I see, is filled with thrifty
plants, which will make it always summer there.
The callas about the fountain will be in flowei
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 congrat-
ulate myself that we are ready for winter.
For the winter-garden I have no responsibility :
Polly has entire charge of it. I am only re-
quired to keep it heated, and not 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 discover a boy
in the ravine filling a bag with chestnuts and
hickory-nuts. They are not plenty this year ;
and I suggest the propriety or leaving some

1 86 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.

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.

CALVIN:

A STUDY OF CHARACTER.

NOTE. The following brief Memoir of one of the charac-
ters in this book is added by his friend, in the hope that the
record of an exemplary life in an humble sphere may be of
some service to the world.

HARTFORD, January, 1880.

CALVIN:

A STUDY OF CHARACTER.

ALVIN is dead. His life, long to him,
but short for the rest of us, was not
marked by startling adventures, but
his character was so uncommon and his qualities
were so worthy of imitation, that I have been
asked by those who personally knew him to set
down my recollections of his career.

His origin and ancestry were shrouded in
mystery ; even his age was a matter of pure
conjecture. Although he was of the Maltese
race, I have reason to suppose that he was
American by birth as he certainly was in sym-
pathy. Calvin was given to me eight years ago
by Mrs. Stowe, but she knew nothing of his age

I go CALVIN :

or origin. He walked into her house one day
out of the great unknown and became at once
at home, as if he had been always a friend of
the family. He appeared to have artistic and
literary tastes, and it was as if he had inquired
at the door if that was the residence of the
author of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," and, upon be-
ing assured that it was, had decided to dwell
there. This is, of course, fanciful, for his ante-
cedents were wholly unknown, but in his time
he could hardly have been in any household
where he would not have heard " Uncle Tom's
Cabin" talked about. When he came to Mrs.
Stowe, he was as large as he ever was, and
apparently as old as he ever became. Yet there
was in him no appearance of age ; he was in
the happy maturity of all his powers, and you
would rather have said that in that maturity he
had found the secret of perpetual youth. And
it was as difficult to believe that he would ever

A STUDY OF CHARACTER. IQI

be aged as it was to imagine that he had ever
been in immature youth. There was in him a
mysterious perpetuity.

After some years, when Mrs. Stowe made her
winter home in Florida, Calvin came to live with
us. From the first moment, he fell into the
ways of the house and assumed a recognized
position in the family, — I say recognized, be-
cause after he became known he was always
inquired for by visitors, and in the letters to the
other members of the family he always received
a message. Although the least obtrusive of be-
ings, his individuality always made itself felt.

His personal appearance had much to do with
this, for he was of royal mould, and had an air
of high breeding. He was large, but he had
nothing of the fat grossness of the celebrated
Angora family; though powerful, he was exqui-
sitely proportioned, and as graceful in every
movement as a young leopard. When he stood

192 CALVIN :

up to open a door — he opened all the doors with
old-fashioned latches — he was portentously tall,
and when stretched on the rug before the fire
he seemed too long for this world — as indeed
he was. His coat was the finest and softest I
have ever seen, a shade of quiet Maltese ; and
from his throat downward, underneath, to the
white tips of his feet, he wore the whitest and
most delicate ermine ; and no person was ever
more fastidiously neat. In his finely formed
head you saw something of his aristocratic char-
acter ; the ears were small and cleanly cut, there
was a tinge of pink in the nostrils, his face was
handsome, and the expression of his countenance
exceedingly intelligent — I should call it even a
sweet expression if the term were not incon-
sistent with his look of alertness and sagacity.

It is difficult to convey a just idea of his gay-
ety in connection with his dignity and gravity,
which his name expressed. As we know noth-

A STUDY OF CHARACTER. 1 93

ing of his family, of course it will be understood
that Calvin was his Christian name. He had
times of relaxation into utter playfulness, delight-
ing in a ball of yarn, catching sportively at stray
ribbons when his mistress was at her toilet, and
pursuing his own tail, with hilarity, for lack of
anything better. He could amuse himself by
the hour, and he did not care for children ; per-
haps something in his past was present to his
memory. He had absolutely no bad habits, and
his disposition was perfect. I never saw him
exactly angry, though I have seen his tail grow
to an enormous size when a strange cat ap-
peared upon his lawn. He disliked cats, evi-
dently regarding them as feline and treacherous,
and he had no association with them. Occa-
sionally there would be heard a night concert
in the shrubbery. Calvin would ask to have
the door opened, and then you would hear a
rush and a " pestzt," and the concert would ex-
9 M

194 CALVIN:

plode, and Calvin would quietly come in and
resume his seat on the hearth. There was no
trace of anger in his manner, but he would n't
have any of that about the house. He had the
rare virtue of magnanimity. Although he had
fixed notions about his own rights, and extraor-
dinary persistency in getting them, he never
showed temper at a repulse ; he simply and
firmly persisted till he had what he wanted.
His diet was one point ; his idea was that of
the scholars about dictionaries, — to "get the
best." He knew as well as any one what was
in the house, and would refuse beef if turkey
was to be had ; and if there were oysters, he
would wait over the turkey to see if the oysters
would not be forthcoming. And yet he was not
a gross gourmand ; he would eat bread if he saw
me eating it, and thought he was not being im-
posed on. His habits of feeding, also, were
refined ; he never used a knife, and he would

A STUDY OF CHARACTER. IQ5

put up his hand and draw the fork down to his
mouth as gracefully as a grown person. Unless
necessity compelled, he would not eat in the
kitchen, but insisted upon his meals in the
dining-room, and would wait patiently, unless a
stranger were present ; and then he was sure to
importune the visitor, hoping that the latter was
ignorant of the rule of the house, and would give
him something. They used to say that he pre-
ferred as his table-cloth on the floor a certain
well-known church journal ; but this was said by
an Episcopalian. So far as I know, he had no
religious prejudices, except that he did not like
the association with Romanists. He tolerated
the servants, because they belonged to the house,
and would sometimes linger by the kitchen stove ;
but the moment visitors came in he arose, opened
the door, and marched into the drawing-room.
Yet he enjoyed the company of his equals, and
never withdrew, no matter how many callers —

196 CALVIN :

whom he recognized as of his society — might
come into the drawing-room. Calvin was fond
of company, but he wanted to choose it ; and I
have no doubt that his was an aristocratic fas-
tidiousness rather than one of faith. It is so
with most people.

The intelligence of Calvin was something phe-
nomenal, in his rank of life. He established a
method of communicating his wants, and even
some of his sentiments ; and he could help him-
self in many things. There was a furnace reg-
ister in a retired room, where he used to go
when he wished to be alone, that he always
opened when he desired more heat ; but never
shut it, any more than he shut the door after
himself. He could do almost everything but
speak ; and you would declare sometimes that
you could see a pathetic longing to do that in
his intelligent face. I have no desire to over-
draw his qualities, but if there was one thing in

A STUDY OF CHARACTER.

him more noticeable than another, it was his fond-
ness for nature. He could content himself for
hours at a low window, looking into the ravine
and at the great trees, noting the smallest stir
there; he delighted, above all things, to accom-
pany me walking about the garden, hearing the
birds, getting the smell of the fresh earth, and
rejoicing in the sunshine. He followed me and
gambolled like a dog, rolling over on the turf
and exhibiting his delight in a hundred ways.
If I worked, he sat and watched me, or looked
off over the bank, and kept his ear open to the
twitter in the cherry-trees. When it stormed, he
was sure to sit at the window, keenly watching
the rain or the snow, glancing up and down at
its falling; and a winter tempest always de-
lighted him. I think he was genuinely fond of
birds, but, so far as I know, he usually confined
himself to one a day; he never killed, as some
sportsmen do, for the sake of killing, but only as

198 CALVIN :

civilized people do, — from necessity. He was
intimate with the flying-squirrels who dwell in
the chestnut-trees, — too intimate, for almost
every day in the summer he would bring in one,
until he nearly discouraged them. He was, in-
deed, a superb hunter, and would have been a
devastating one, if his bump of destructiveness
had not been offset by a bump of moderation.
There was very little of the brutality of the
lower animals about him ; I don't think he en-
joyed rats for themselves, but he knew his busi-
ness, and for the first few months of his residence
with us he waged an awful campaign against the
horde, and after that his simple presence was
sufficient to deter them from coming on the
premises. Mice amused him, but he usually con-
sidered them too small game to be taken seri-
ously ; I have seen him play for an hour with a
mouse, and then let him go with a royal con-
descension. In this whole matter of "getting a

A STUDY OF CHARACTER. 199

living," Calvin was a great contrast to the ra-
pacity of the age in which he lived.

I hesitate a little to speak of his capacity for
friendship and the affectionateness of his nature,
for I know from his own reserve that he would
not care to have it much talked about. We un-
derstood each other perfectly, but we never made
any fuss about it ; when I spoke his name and
snapped my fingers, he came to me ; when I re-
turned home at night, he was pretty sure to be
waiting for me near the gate, and would rise and
saunter along the walk, as if his being there were
purely accidental, — so shy was he commonly of
showing feeling ; and when I opened the door
he never rushed in, like a cat, but loitered, and
lounged, as if he had had no intention of going
in, but would condescend to. And yet, the fact
was, he knew dinner was ready, and he was bound
to be there. He kept the run of dinner-time. It
happened sometimes, during our absence in the

200 CALVIN :

summer, that dinner would be early, and Calvin,
walking about the grounds, missed it and came
in late. But he never made a mistake the sec-
ond day. There was one thing he never did, —
he never rushed through an open doorway. He
never forgot his dignity. If he had asked to
have the door opened, and was eager to go out,
he always went deliberately ; I can see him now,
standing on the sill, looking about at the sky as
if he was thinking whether it were worth while
to take an umbrella, until he was near having his
tail shut in.

His friendship was rather constant than de-
monstrative. When we returned from an absence
of nearly two years, Calvin welcomed us with
evident pleasure, but showed his satisfaction
rather by tranquil happiness than by fuming
about. He had the faculty of making us glad
to get home. It was his constancy that was
so attractive. He liked companionship, but he

A STUDY OF CHARACTER. 2OI

would n't be petted, or fussed over, or sit in any
one's lap a moment ; he always extricated him-
self from such familiarity with dignity and with
no show of temper. If there was any petting to
be done, however, he chose to do it. Often he
would sit looking at me, and then, moved by a
delicate affection, come and pull at my coat and
sleeve until he could touch my face with his nose,
and then go away contented. He had a habit
of coming to my study in the morning, sitting
quietly by my side or on the table for hours,
watching the pen run over the paper, occasion-
ally swinging his tail round for a blotter, and
then going to sleep among the papers by the
inkstand. Or, more rarely, he would watch the
writing from a perch on my shoulder. Writing
always interested him, and, until he understood
it, he wanted to hold the pen.

He always held himself in a kind of reserve
with his friend, as if he had said, " Let us respect
9*

2O2 CALVIN :

our personality, and not make a ' mess ' of friend-
ship." He saw, with Emerson, the risk of de-
grading it to trivial conveniency. "Why insist
on rash personal relations with your friend ? "
" Leave this touching and clawing." Yet I would
not give an unfair notion of his aloofness, his
fine sense of the sacredness of the me and the
not-me. And, at the risk of not being believed,
I will relate an incident, which was often re-
peated. Calvin had the practice of passing a

portion of the night in the contemplation of its

»

beauties, and would come into our chamber over
the roof of the conservatory through the open
window, summer and winter, and go to sleep on
the foot of my bed. He would do this always
exactly in this way ; he never was content to
stay in the chamber if we compelled him to go
upstairs and through the door. He had the ob-
stinacy of General Grant. But this is by the
way. In the morning, he performed his toilet

A STUDY OF CHARACTER. 203

and went down to breakfast with the rest of the
family. Now, when the mistress was absent
from home, and at no other time, Calvin would
come in the morning, when the bell rang, to the
head of the bed, put up his feet and look into
my face, follow me about when I rose, "assist"
at the dressing, and in many purring ways show
his fondness, as if he had plainly said, " I know
that she has gone away, but I am here." Such
was Calvin in rare moments.

He had his limitations. Whatever passion he
had for nature, he had no conception of art.
There was sent to him once a fine and very
expressive cat's head in bronze, by Fremiet. I
placed it on the floor. He regarded it intently,
approached it cautiously and crouchingly, touched
it with his nose, perceived the fraud, turned away
abruptly, and never would notice it afterward.
On the whole, his life was not only a successful
one, but a happy one. He never had but one

2O4 CALVIN :

fear, so far as I know : he had a mortal and a
reasonable terror of plumbers. He would never
stay in the house when they were here. No
coaxing could quiet him. Of course he did n't
share our fear about their charges, but he must
have had some dreadful experience with them
in that portion of his life which is unknown to
us. A plumber was to him the devil, and I have
no doubt that, in his scheme, plumbers were fore-
ordained to do him mischief.

In speaking of his worth, it has never occurred
to me to estimate Calvin by the worldly stand-
ard. I know that it is customary now, when
any one dies, to ask how much he was worth,
and that no obituary in the newspapers is con-
sidered complete without such an estimate. The
plumbers in our house were one day overheard
to say that, "They say that she says that he says
that he would n't take a hundred dollars for him."
It is unnecessary to say that I never made such

A STUDY OF CHARACTER.

a remark, and that, so far as Calvin was con-
cerned, there was no purchase in money.

As I look back upon it, Calvin's life seems to
me a fortunate one, for it was natural and un-
forced. He ate when he was hungry, slept when
he was sleepy, and enjoyed existence to the very
tips of k his toes and the end of his expressive and
slow-moving tail. He delighted to roam about
the garden, and stroll among the trees, and to
lie on the green grass -and luxuriate in all the
sweet influences of summer. You could never
accuse him of idleness, and yet he knew the
secret of repose. The poet who wrote so pret-
tily of him that his little life was rounded with
a sleep, understated his felicity ; it was rounded
with a good many. His conscience never seemed
to interfere with his slumbers. In fact, he had
good habits and a contented mind. I can see
him now walk in at the study door, sit down by
my chair, bring his tail artistically about his feet,

2O6 CALVIN :

and look up at me with unspeakable happiness
in his handsome face. I often thought that he
felt the dumb limitation which denied him the
power of language. But since he was denied
speech, he scorned the inarticulate mouthings
of the lower animals. The vulgar mewing and
yowling of the cat species was beneath him ; he
sometimes uttered a sort of articulate and well-
bred ejaculation, when he wished to call atten-
tion to something that he considered remarkable,
or to some want of his, but he never went whin-
ing about. He would sit for hours at a closed
window, when he desired to enter, without a
murmur, and when it was opened he never ad-
mitted that he had been impatient by "bolting"
in. Though speech he had not, and the unpleas-
ant kind of utterance given to his race he would
not use, he had a mighty power of purr to ex-
press his measureless content with congenial
society. There was in him a musical organ with

A STUDY OF CHARACTER. 2O/

stops of varied power and expression, upon which
I have no doubt he could have performed Scar-
latti's celebrated cat's-fugue.

Whether Calvin died of old age, or was car-
ried off by one of the diseases incident to youth,
it is impossible to say; for his departure was as
quiet as his advent was mysterious. I only know
that he appeared to us in this world in his per-
fect stature and beauty, and that after a time,
like Lohengrin, he withdrew. In his illness
there was nothing more to be regretted than
in all his blameless life. I suppose there never
was an illness that had more of dignity and
sweetness and resignation in it. It came on
gradually, in a kind of listlessness and want of
appetite. An alarming symptom was his pref-
erence for the warmth of a furnace-register to
the lively sparkle of the open wood-fire. What-
ever pain he suffered, he bore it in silence, and
seemed only anxious not to obtrude his malady.

2O8 CALVIN :

We tempted him with the delicacies of the sea-
son, but it soon became impossible for him to
eat, and for two weeks he ate or drank scarcely
anything. Sometimes he made an effort to take
something, but it was evident that he made the
effort to please us. The neighbors — and I
am convinced that the advice of neighbors is
never good for anything — suggested catnip. He
would n't even smell it. We had the attendance
of an amateur practitioner of medicine, whose
real office was the cure of souls, but nothing
touched his case. He took what was offered,
but it was with the air of one to whom the time
for pellets was passed. He sat or lay day after
day almost motionless, never once making a dis-
play of those vulgar convulsions or contortions
of pain which are so disagreeable to society.
His favorite place was on the brightest spot of
a Smyrna rug by the conservatory, where the
sunlight fell and he could hear the fountain play

A STUDY OF CHARACTER. 209

If we went to him and exhibited our interest in
his condition, he always purred in recognition of
our sympathy. And when I spoke his name, he
looked up with an expression that said, "I un-
derstand it, old fellow, but it 's no use." He was
to all who came to visit him a model of calmness
and patience in affliction.

I was absent from home at the last, but heard
by daily postal-card of his failing condition ; and
never again saw him alive. One sunny morning,
he rose from his rug, went into the conservatory
(he was very thin then), walked around it delib-
erately, looking at all the plants he knew, and
then went to the bay-window in the dining-room,
and stood a long time looking out upon the little
field, now brown and sere, and toward the gar-
den, where perhaps the happiest hours of his life
had been spent. It was a last look. He turned
and walked away, laid himself down upon the
bright spot in the rug, and quietly died.

210 CALVIN:

It is not too much to say that a little shock
went through the neighborhood when it was
known that Calvin was dead, so marked was his
individuality ; and his friends, one after another,
came in to see him. There was no sentimental
nonsense about his obsequies ; it was felt that
any parade would have been distasteful to him.
John, who acted as undertaker, prepared a candle-
box for him, and I believe assumed a profes-
sional decorum ; but there may have been the
usual levity underneath, for I heard that he re-
marked in the kitchen that it was the " dryest
wake he ever attended." Everybody, however,
felt a fondness for Calvin, and regarded him with
a certain respect. Between him and Bertha there
existed a great friendship, and she apprehended
his nature ; she used to say that sometimes she
was afraid of him, he looked at her so intelli-
gently ; she was never certain that he was what
he appeared to be.

A STUDY OF CHARACTER. 211

When I returned, they had laid Calvin on a
table in an upper chamber by an open window.
It was February. He reposed in a candle-box,
lined about the edge with evergreen, and at his
head stood a little wine-glass with flowers. He
lay with his head tucked down in his arms, — a
favorite position of his before the fire, — as if
asleep in the comfort of his soft and exquisite
fur. It was the involuntary exclamation of those
who saw him, " How natural he looks ! " As for
myself, I said nothing. John buried him under
the twin hawthorn-trees, — one white and the
other pink, — in a spot where Calvin was fond
of lying and listening to the hum of summer
insects and the twitter of birds.

Perhaps I have failed to make appear the in-

•
dividuality of character that was so evident to

those who knew him. At any rate, I have set
down nothing concerning him but the literal

212 CALVIN.

truth. He was always a mystery. I did not
know whence he came; I do not know whither
he has gone. I would not weave one spray of
falsehood in the wreath I lay upon his grave.

mm •

• '• , 1

P3
3152
M?
1888

Warner, Charles Dudley
My summer in a garden

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