Chapter C: D. WARNER, My Summer in a Garden

_GOOD ADVICE._

This gardener's rule applies to youth and age:
When young "sow wild oats," but when old "grow sage."

H. J. BYRON, in _English Epigrams_.

The sacred slow harmonium bring,
The gentler pianette,
The cymbals, with sonorous ring,
The dulcet flageolet.

Nor be the voice of glory dumb,
Of conquest and of strife,
Bring forth the stirring trump and drum,
The shrill and piercing fife.

Ay, bring them all, my soul with glee
To music I'll devote;
Bring all--for all are one to me,--
I cannot play a note!

_Songs of Singularity._

We sometimes hate those who differ from us in
opinion worse than we should for an attempt to
injure us in the most serious point. A favourite
theory is a possession for life; and we resent any attack
upon it proportionably.

W. HAZLITT, _Characteristics_.

When Mrs. M'Gibbon was preparing to act Jane
Shore, at Liverpool, her dresser, an ignorant
country girl, informed her that a woman had
called to request two box orders, because she and her
daughter had walked four miles on purpose to see the
play. "Does she know me?" inquired the mistress.
"Not at all," was the reply. "What a very odd request!"
exclaimed Mrs. M'G. "Has the good woman got her
faculties about her?" "I think she have, ma'am, for I
see she ha' got summut tied up in a red silk handkercher."

HORACE SMITH, _The Tin Trumpet_.

A clerke ther was, a puissant wight was hee,
Who of ye Wethere hadde ye maisterie;
Alway it was his mirthe and his solace
To put eche seson's wethere out of place.

Whaune that Aprille shoures wer our desyre,
He gaf us Julye sonnes as hotte as fyre;
But sith ye summere togges we donned agayne,
Eftsoons ye wethere chaunged to colde and rayne.

_Songs of Singularity._

I shouldn't like to be a man--to cough so
loud, and stand straddling about on a wet day,
and be so wasteful with meat and drink. They're
a coarse lot, I think.

_Denner_, in GEORGE ELIOT's _Felix Holt_.

Once the mastodon was: pterodactyls were common as cocks:
Then the Mammoth was God: now is He a prize ox.

Parallels all things are: yet many of these are askew:
You are certainly I: but certainly I am not you.

Springs the rock from the plain, shoots the stream from the rock:
Cocks exist for the hen: but hens exist for the cock.

God, whom we see not, is: and God, who is not, we see:
Fiddle, we know, is diddle: and diddle, we take it, is dee.

_The Heptalogia._

_A privileged person._--One who is so
much of a savage when thwarted that civilized
persons avoid thwarting him.

ANNE EVANS, _Poems and Music_.

I've studied human nature, and I know a thing or two;
Though a girl may fondly love a living gent, as many do:
A feeling of disgust upon her senses there will fall
When she looks upon his body chopped particularly small.

W. S. GILBERT, _Bab Ballads_.

The Bishop of Exeter, in the course of conversation
at a dinner-party, mentioned that many
years since, while trout-fishing, he lost his watch
and chain, which he supposed had been pulled from his
pocket by the bough of a tree. Some time afterwards,
when staying in the same neighbourhood, he took a
stroll by the side of the river, and came to the secluded
spot where he supposed he had lost his valuables, and
there, to his surprise and delight, he found them under a
bush. The anecdote, vouched for by the word of a
bishop, astonished the company; but this was changed
to amusement by his son's inquiring whether the watch,
when found, was going. "No," replied the bishop;
"the wonder was that it was not gone."

GRONOW, _Recollections_.

_ON FORTUNE._

Fortune, they say, doth give too much to many:
And yet she never gave enough to any.

SIR JOHN HARYNGTON (1561-1612).

I do not speak of this mole in any tone of complaint.
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 copybook, which, dying, he
was sorry he had blotted."