Chapter I: SUPPOSE we are about as happy as the most of folks, but as I was (2)

“It was two or three days after the dog-fight that I was down at the barn, and happenin’ to look over to old John’s, I saw that tree-man there. He was a-showin’ his book to John, and him and his wife and all the young ones was a-standin’ there, drinkin’ down them big peaches and pears as if they was all real. I know’d he’d come here ag’in, for them fellers never gives you up; and I didn’t know how to keep him away, for I didn’t want to let the dogs loose on a man what, after all, didn’t want to do no more harm than to talk the life out of you. So I just happened to notice, as I came to the house, how kind of desolate everything looked, and I thought perhaps I might make it look worse, and he wouldn’t care to deal here. So I thought of putting up a poster like that, for nobody whose place was a-goin’ to be sold for taxes would be likely to want trees. So I run in the house, and wrote it quick and put it up. And sure enough, the man he come along soon, and when he looked at that paper and tried the gate, an’ looked over the fence an’ saw the house all shut up an’ not a livin’ soul about,—for I had both the dogs in the house with me,—he shook his head an’ walked off, as much as to say, ‘If that man had fixed his place up proper with my trees, he wouldn’t ’a’ come to this!’ An’ then, as I found the poster worked so good, I thought it might keep other people from comin’ a-botherin’ around, and so I left it up; but I was a-goin’ to be sure and take it down before you came.”

As it was now pretty late in the afternoon, I proposed that Pomona should postpone the rest of her narrative until evening. She said that there was nothing else to tell that was very particular; and I did not feel as if I could stand anything more just now, even if it was very particular.

When we were alone, I said to Euphemia—

“If we ever have to go away from this place again——”

“But we won’t go away,” she interrupted, looking up to me with as bright a face as she ever had; “at least not for a long, long, long time to come. And I’m _so_ glad you’re to be a vestryman.”

_Frank R. Stockton._

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_TEMPEST IN A TUB._

IT was all about a wash-tub. Mrs. Villiers had loaned Mrs. Ransom her wash-tub. This was two weeks ago last Monday. When Mrs. Villiers saw it again, which was the next morning, it stood on her backstoop, minus a hoop. Mrs. Villiers sent over to Mrs. Ransom’s a request for the hoop, couched in language calculated to impugn Mrs. Ransom’s reputation for carefulness. Mrs. Ransom lost no time in sending back word that the tub was all right when it was sent back; and delicately intimated that Mrs. Villiers had better sweep before her own door first, whatever that might mean. Each having discharged a Christian duty to each other, further communication was immediately cut off; and the affair was briskly discussed by the neighbours, who entered into the merits and demerits of the affair with unselfish zeal. Heaven bless them! Mrs. Ransom clearly explained her connection with the tub by charging Mr. Villiers with coming home drunk as a fiddler the night before Christmas. This bold statement threatened to carry the neighbours over in a body to Mrs. Ransom’s view, until Mrs. Villiers remembered, and promptly chronicled the fact, that the Ransoms were obliged to move away from their last place because of non-payment of rent. Here the matter rested among the neighbours, leaving them as undecided as before. But between the two families immediately concerned the fire burned as luridly as when first kindled. It was a constant skirmish between the two women, from early morning until late at night. Mrs. Ransom would glare through her blinds when Mrs. Villiers was in the yard, and murmur between her clenched teeth—

“Oh, you hussy!”

And, with that wonderful instinct which characterises the human above the brute animal, Mrs. Villiers understood that Mrs. Ransom was thus engaged, and, lifting her nose at the highest angle compatible with the safety of her spinal cord, would sail around the yard as triumphantly as if escorted by a brigade of genuine princes.

And then would come Mrs. Villiers’s turn at the window with Mrs. Ransom in the yard, with a like satisfactory and edifying result.

When company called on Mrs. Villiers, Mrs. Ransom would peer from behind her curtains and audibly exclaim—

“Who’s that fright, I wonder?”

And when Mrs. Ransom was favoured with a call, it was Mrs. Villiers’s blessed privilege to be at the window and audibly observe—

“Where was that clod dug up from?”

Mrs. Ransom has a little boy named Tommy, and Mrs. Villiers has a similar sized son, who struggles under the cognomen of Wickliffe Morgan; and it will happen, because these two children are too young to grasp fully the grave responsibilities of life—it will happen, I repeat, that they will come together in various respects. If Mrs. Ransom is so fortunate as to first observe one of these cohesions, she promptly steps to the door, and, covertly waiting until Mrs. Villiers’s door opens, she shrilly observes—“Thomas Jefferson, come right into this house this minute! How many times have I told you to keep away from that Villiers brat?”

“_Villiers brat!_” What a stab that is! What subtle poison it is saturated with! Poor Mrs. Villiers’s breath comes thick and hard; her face burns like fire, and her eyes almost snap out of her head. She has to press her hand to her heart as if to keep that organ from bursting; there is no relief from the dreadful throbbing and the dreadful pain. The slamming of Mrs. Ransom’s door shuts out all hope of succour. But it quickens Mrs. Villiers’s faculties, and makes her so alert, that when the two children come together again, which they very soon do, she is first at the door. Now is the opportunity to heap burning coals on the head of Mrs. Ransom. She heaps them.

“Wickliffe Morgan! what are you doing out there with that Ransom imp? Do you want to catch some disease? Come in here before I skin you.” And the door slams shut, and poor Mrs. Ransom, with trembling form and bated breath and flashing eyes, clinches her fingers, and glares with tremendous wrath over the landscape.

And in the absence of any real, tangible information as to the loss of that hoop, this is perhaps the very best that can be done on either side.

_J. M. Bailey._

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_THE STOUT GENTLEMAN._

A TALE OF MYSTERY.

IT was a rainy Sunday, in the gloomy month of November. I had been detained in the course of a journey by a slight indisposition, from which I was recovering, but I was still feverish, and was obliged to keep within doors all day, in an inn of the small town of Derby. A wet Sunday in a country inn! whoever has had the luck to experience one can alone judge of my situation. The rain pattered against the casements; the bells tolled for church with a melancholy sound. I went to the window in quest of something to amuse the eye; but it seemed as if I had been placed completely out of reach of all amusement. The windows of my bedroom looked out among tiled roofs and stacks of chimneys; while those of my sitting-room commanded a full view of the stable-yard. I know of nothing more calculated to make a man sick of this world than a stable-yard on a rainy day. The place was littered with wet straw that had been kicked about by travellers and stable-boys; in one corner was a stagnant pool of water surrounding an island of muck; there were several half-drowned fowls crowded together under a cart, among which was a miserable, crestfallen cock, drenched out of all life and spirit; his drooping tail matted as it were into a single feather, along which the water trickled from his back. Near the cart was a half-dozing cow, chewing the cud, and standing patiently to be rained on, with wreaths of vapour rising from her reeking hide; a wall-eyed horse, tired of the loneliness of the stable, was poking his spectral head out of a window, with the rain dripping on it from the eaves; an unhappy cur, chained to a dog-house hard by uttering something every now and then between a bark and a yelp; a drab of a kitchen wench tramped backwards and forwards through the yard in pattens, looking as sulky as the weather itself; everything, in short, was comfortless and forlorn, excepting a crew of hard-drinking ducks, assembled like boon companions round a puddle, and making a riotous noise over their liquor.

I was lonely and listless, and wanted amusement. My room soon became insupportable. I abandoned it and sought what is technically called the traveller’s room. This is a public room set apart at most inns for the accommodation of a class of wayfarers called travellers or riders; a kind of commercial knights-errant who are incessantly scouring the kingdom in gigs, on horseback, or by coach. They are the only successors, that I know of at the present day, to the knights-errant of yore. They lead the same kind of roving, adventurous life, only changing the lance for a whip, the buckler for a pattern-card, and the coat of mail for an upper Benjamin. Instead of vindicating the charms of peerless beauty, they rove about spreading the fame and standing of some substantial tradesman or manufacturer, and are ready at any time to bargain in his name; it being the fashion nowadays to trade instead of fight with one another. As the room of the Hostel, in the good old fighting times, would be hung round at night with the armour of wayworn warriors, such as coats of mail, falchions, and yawning helmets; so the traveller’s room is garnished with the harnessing of their successors; with box-coats, whips of all kinds, spurs, gaiters, and oilcloth-covered hats.

I was in hopes of finding some of these worthies to talk with, but was disappointed, there were, indeed, two or three in the room, but I could make nothing of them. One was just finishing his breakfast, quarrelling with his bread and butter, and huffing the waiter; another buttoned on a pair of gaiters, with many execrations at “Boots” for not having cleaned his shoes well; a third sat drumming on the table with his fingers, and looking at the rain as it streamed down the window-glass; they all appeared infected by the weather, and disappeared, one after the other, without exchanging a word.

I sauntered to the window, and stood gazing at the people picking their way to church, with petticoats hoisted mid-leg high, and dripping umbrellas. The bell ceased to toll, and the streets became silent. I then amused myself with watching the daughters of a tradesman opposite; who, being confined to the house, for fear of wetting their Sunday finery, played off their charms at the front windows to fascinate the chance tenants of the inn. They at length were summoned away by a vigilant vinegar-faced mother, and I had nothing further from without to amuse me.

What was I to do to pass away the long-lived day? I was sadly nervous and lonely; and everything about an inn seemed calculated to make a dull day ten times duller. Old newspapers smelling of beer and tobacco smoke, and which I had already read half-a-dozen times. Good-for-nothing books, that were worse than the rainy weather. I bored myself to death with an old volume of the _Lady’s Magazine_. I read all the commonplace names of ambitious travellers scrawled on the panes of glass; the eternal families of the Smiths, and the Browns, and the Jacksons, and the Johnsons, and all the other sons; and I deciphered several scraps of fatiguing inn-window poetry that I have met with in all parts of the world.

The day continued lowering and gloomy; the slovenly, ragged, spongy clouds drifted heavily along in the air; there was no variety even in the rain; it was one dull, continued, monotonous patter, patter, patter; excepting that now and then I was enlivened by the idea of a brisk shower, from the rattlings of the drops upon a passing umbrella. It was quite _refreshing_ (if I may be allowed a hackneyed phrase of the day) when in the course of the morning a horn blew, and a stage-coach whirled through the street, with outside passengers stuck all over it, cowering under cotton umbrellas; and seethed together, and reeking with the steams of wet box-coats and upper Benjamins.

The sound brought out from their lurking-places a crew of vagabond boys and vagabond dogs, with the carroty-headed hostler and the nondescript animal ycleped Boots, and all the other vagabond race that infest the purlieus of an inn; but the bustle was transient; the coach again whirled on its way; the boy, and dog, and hostler, and Boots, all slunk back again to their holes; and the street again became silent, and the rain continued to rain on. In fact there was no hope of its clearing up; the barometer pointed to rainy weather; mine hostess’s tortoise-shell cat sat by the fire washing her face and rubbing her paws over her ears; and on referring to the almanac, I found a direful prediction from the top of the page to the bottom through the whole month, “expect—much—rain—about—this—time.”

I was dreadfully hipped. The hours seemed as if they would never creep by. The very ticking of the clock became irksome. At length the stillness of the house was interrupted by the ringing of a bell. Shortly after I heard the voice of a waiter at the bar, “The Stout Gentleman in No. 13 wants his breakfast. Tea and bread and butter, with ham and eggs; the eggs not to be too much done.”

In such a situation as mine every incident is of importance. Here was a subject of speculation presented to my mind, and ample exercise for my imagination. I am prone to paint pictures to myself, and on this occasion I had some material to work upon. Had the guest upstairs been mentioned as Mr. Smith, or Mr. Brown, or Jackson, or Mr. Johnson, or merely as the gentleman in No. 13, it would have been a perfect blank to me. I should have thought nothing of it. But “the Stout Gentleman!”—the very name had something in it of the picturesque. It at once gave the size, it embodied the personage to my mind’s eye, and my fancy did the rest. “He was stout, or, as some term it, lusty; in all probability therefore he was advanced in life; some people expanding as they grow old. By his breakfasting rather late, and in his own room, he must be a man accustomed to live at his ease, and above the necessity of early rising; no doubt a round, rosy, lusty old gentleman.”

There was another violent ringing; the Stout Gentleman was impatient for his breakfast. He was evidently a man of importance, “well-to-do in the world,” accustomed to be promptly waited upon, of a keen appetite, and a little cross when hungry. “Perhaps,” thought I, “he may be some London alderman; or who knows but he may be a member of Parliament?”

The breakfast was sent up, and there was a short interval of silence; he was doubtless making the tea. Presently there was a violent ringing, and before it could be answered, another ringing, still more violent. “Bless me! what a choleric old gentleman!” The waiter came down in a huff. The butter was rancid, the eggs were overdone, the ham was too salt. The Stout Gentleman was evidently nice in his eating. One of those who eat and growl and keep the waiter on the trot, and live in a state militant with the household.

The hostess got into a fume. I should observe that she was a brisk, coquettish woman; a little of a shrew, and something of a slammerkin, but very pretty withal; with a nincompoop for a husband, as shrews are apt to have. She rated the servants roundly for their negligence in sending up so bad a breakfast; but said not a word against the Stout Gentleman; by which I clearly perceived he must be a man of consequence; entitled to make a noise and to give trouble at a country inn. Other eggs and ham and bread and butter were sent. They appeared to be more graciously received; at last there was no further complaint, and I had not made many turns about the traveller’s room when there was another ringing. Shortly afterwards there was a stir, and an inquest about the house. “The Stout Gentleman wanted the _Times_ or the _Chronicle_ newspaper.” I set him down, therefore, for a whig; or rather, from his being so absolute and lordly where he had a chance, I suspected him of being a radical. Hunt, I had heard, was a large man. “Who knows,” thought I, “but it is Hunt himself?”

My curiosity began to be awakened. I inquired of the waiter who was this Stout Gentleman that was making all this stir, but I could get no information. Nobody seemed to know his name. The landlords of bustling inns seldom trouble their heads about the names of their transient guests. The colour of a coat, the shape or size of the person, is enough to suggest a travelling name. It is either the tall gentleman, or the short gentleman; or the gentleman in black, or the gentleman in snuff colour; or, as in the present instance, the Stout Gentleman; a designation of the kind once hit on answers every purpose, and saves all further inquiry.

Rain—rain—rain! pitiless, ceaseless rain! no such thing as putting a foot out of doors, and no occupation or amusement within. By-and-by I heard some one walking overhead. It was in the Stout Gentleman’s room. He evidently was a large man by the heaviness of his tread; and an old man from his wearing such creaking soles. “He is doubtless,” thought I, “some rich old square-toes, of regular habits, and is now taking exercise after breakfast.”

I now read all the advertisements of coaches and hotels that were stuck about the mantelpiece. The _Lady’s Magazine_ had become an abomination to me; it was as tedious as the day itself. I wandered out, not knowing what to do, and ascended again to my room. I had not been there long when there was a squall from a neighbouring bedroom. A door opened and slammed violently; a chambermaid that I had remarked for a ruddy, good-humoured face, went downstairs in a violent flurry. The Stout Gentleman had been rude to her.

This sent a whole host of my deductions to the deuce in a moment. This unknown personage could not be an old gentleman; for old gentlemen are not apt to be so obstreperous to chambermaids. He could not be a young gentleman; for young gentlemen are not apt to inspire such indignation. He must be a middle-aged man, and confoundedly ugly into the bargain, or the girl would not have taken the matter in such terrible dudgeon. I confess I was sorely puzzled. In a few minutes I heard the voice of my landlady. I caught a glance of her as she came tramping upstairs, her face glowing, her cap flaring, her tongue wagging the whole way.

“She’d have no such doings in her house, she’d warrant. If gentlemen did spend their money freely, it was no rule. She’d have no servant-maids of hers treated in that way, when they were about their work, that’s what she wouldn’t.”

As I hate squabbles, particularly with women, and above all with pretty women, I slunk back into my room, and partly closed the door; but my curiosity was too much excited not to listen. The landlady marched intrepidly to the enemy’s citadel and entered it with a storm. The door closed after her. I heard her voice in high windy clamour for a moment or two. Then it gradually subsided, like a gust of wind in a garret. Then there was a laugh; then I heard nothing more. After a little while my landlady came out with an odd smile on her face, adjusting her cap, which was a little on one side. As she went downstairs I heard the landlord ask her what was the matter; she said, “Nothing at all—only the girl’s a fool!” I was more than ever perplexed what to make of this unaccountable personage, who could put a good-natured chambermaid in a passion, and send away a termagant landlady in smiles. He could not be so old, nor cross, nor ugly either.

I had to go to work at his picture again, and to paint him entirely different. I now set him down for one of those Stout Gentlemen that are frequently met with swaggering about the doors of country inns. Moist, merry fellows, in Belcher handkerchiefs, whose bulk is a little assisted by malt liquors. Men who have seen the world, and been sworn at Highgate. Who are used to tavern life; up to all the tricks of tapsters, and knowing in the ways of sinful publicans. Free livers on a small scale, who call all the waiters by name, tousle the maids, gossip with the landlady at the bar, and prose over a pint of port or a glass of negus after dinner.

The morning wore away in forming these and similar surmises. As fast as I wove one system of belief, some movement of the unknown would completely overturn it, and throw all my thoughts again into confusion. Such are the solitary operations of a feverish mind. I was, as I have said, extremely nervous, and the continual meditation on the concerns of this invisible personage began to have its effects—I was getting a fit of fidgets.

Dinner-time came. I hoped the Stout Gentleman might dine in the traveller’s room, and that I might at length get a view of his person; but no—he had dinner served in his own room. What could be the meaning of this solitude and mystery? He could not be a radical; there was something too aristocratical in thus keeping himself apart from the rest of the world, and condemning himself to his own dull company throughout a rainy day. And then too he lived too well for a discontented politician. He seemed to expatiate on a variety of dishes, and to sit over his wine like a jolly friend of good living.

Indeed, my doubts on this head were soon at an end, for he could not have finished his first bottle before I could faintly hear him humming a tune, and on listening I found it to be “God Save the King.” ’Twas plain then he was no radical, but a faithful subject; one that grew loyal over his bottle, and was ready to stand by his king and constitution when he could stand by nothing else. But who could he be? My conjectures began to run wild. Was he not some personage of distinction travelling _incog._? “God knows!” said I, at my wit’s end; “it maybe one of the royal family for aught I know, for they are all Stout Gentlemen!”

The weather continued rainy. The mysterious person kept his room, and, as far as I could judge, his chair; for I did not hear him move. In the meantime, as the day advanced, the traveller’s room began to be frequented. Some who had just arrived came in buttoned up in box coats; others came home who had been dispersed about the town. Some took their dinners, and some their tea. Had I been in a different mood, I should have found entertainment in studying this peculiar class of men. There were two, especially, who were regular wags of the road, and up to all the standing jokes of travellers. They had a thousand sly things to say to the waiting-maid, whom they called Louisa, and Ethelinda, and a dozen other fine names, changing the name every time, and chuckling amazingly at their own waggery. My mind, however, had become completely engrossed by the Stout Gentleman. He had kept my fancy in chase during a long day, and it was not now to be diverted from the scent.

The evening gradually wore away. The travellers read the papers two or three times over. Some drew around the fire, and told long stories about their horses, about their adventures, their over-turns, and breakings-down. They discussed the credits of different merchants and different inns, and the two wags told several choice anecdotes of pretty chambermaids and kind landladies. All this passed as they were quietly taking what they called their “nightcaps,”—that is to say, strong glasses of brandy and water with sugar, or some other mixture of the kind; after which they one after another rang for “boots” and the chambermaids, and walked up to bed in old shoes, cut down into marvellously uncomfortable slippers.

There was only one man left; a short-legged, long-bodied, plethoric fellow, with a very large sandy head. He sat by himself, with a glass of port wine negus and a spoon, sipping and stirring until nothing was left but the spoon. He gradually fell asleep, bolt upright in his chair, with the empty glass standing before him; and the candle seemed to fall asleep too, for the wick grew long and black and cabbaged at the end, and dimmed the little light that remained in the chamber.

The gloom that now prevailed was contagious. Around hung the shapeless and almost spectral box-coats of departed travellers, long since buried in deep sleep. I only heard the ticking of the clock, with the deep-drawn breathing of the sleeping toper, and the dripping of the rain, drop—drop—drop, from the eaves of the house.

The church bells chimed midnight. All at once the Stout Gentleman began to walk overhead, pacing slowly backwards and forwards. There was something extremely awful in all this—especially to me in my state of nerves. These ghastly great-coats, these guttural breathings, and the creaking footsteps of the mysterious being. His steps grew fainter and fainter, and at length died away. I could bear it no longer; I was wound up to the desperation of a hero of romance. “Be he who or what he may,” said I to myself, “I’ll have a sight of him!” I seized a chamber candle and hurried up to No. 13. The door stood ajar. I hesitated—I entered—the room was deserted. There stood a large, broad-bottomed elbow-chair at a table, on which was an empty tumbler and a _Times_ newspaper, and the room smelt powerfully of Stilton cheese.

The mysterious stranger had evidently but just retired. I turned off to my room sorely disappointed. As I went along the corridor I saw a large pair of boots, with dirty, waxed tops, standing at the door of a bed-chamber. They doubtless belonged to the unknown; but it would not do to disturb so redoubtable a personage in his den; he might discharge a pistol or something worse at my head. I went to bed therefore, and lay awake half the night in a terribly nervous state; and even when I fell asleep I was still haunted in my dreams by the idea of the Stout Gentleman and his wax-topped boots.

I slept rather late the next morning, and was awakened by some stir and bustle in the house, which I could not at first comprehend; until getting more awake, I found there was a mail coach starting from the door. Suddenly there was a cry from below: “The gentleman has forgot his umbrella; look for the gentleman’s umbrella in No. 13.”

I heard an immediate scamper of a chambermaid along the passage, and a shrill reply, as she ran, “Here it is! here’s the gentleman’s umbrella!”

The mysterious stranger then was on the point of setting off. This was the only chance I should ever have of knowing him. I sprang out of bed, scrambled to the window, snatched aside the curtains, and just caught a glimpse of the rear of a person getting in at the coach-door. The skirts of a brown coat parted behind, and gave me a full view of the broad disc of a pair of drab breeches. The door closed. “All right,” was the word; the coach whirled off—and that was all I ever saw of the Stout Gentleman.

_Washington Irving._

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_MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN._

SECOND WEEK.

NEXT 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 sex, of course) to have a garden to his own selfish uses. He ought not to please himself, but every man to please his neighbour. 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 neighbours 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 into vines and runners. I suppose I could raise strawberries enough for all my neighbours; and perhaps I ought to do it. I had a little space prepared for melons,—musk-melons,—which I showed to an experienced friend. “You are not going to waste your ground on musk-melons?” he asked. “They rarely ripen in this climate thoroughly, before frost.” He had tried for years without luck. I resolved not to go into such a foolish experiment. But, the next day, another neighbour 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 wouldn’t. But I had the same difficulty about string-beans (which I detest), and squash (which I tolerate), and parsnips, and the whole round of green things.

I have pretty much come to the conclusion that you have got to put your foot down in gardening. 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 her plants with a vigour 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.

“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 London 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 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 disgusted, and go away. You can’t get up too early if you have a garden. You must be early due yourself, if you get ahead of the bugs. I think that, on the whole, it would be best to sit up all night, and sleep day-times. Things appear to go on in the night in the garden uncommonly. It would be less trouble to stay up than it is to get up so early.

I have been setting out some new raspberries, two sorts,—a silver and a gold colour. How fine they will look on the table next year in a cut-glass dish, the cream being in a ditto pitcher! I set them four and five feet apart. I set my strawberries pretty well apart also. The reason is, to give room for the cows to run through when they break into the garden,—as they do sometimes. A cow needs a broader track than a 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 raspberries 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 colour, and got sour. They ripen badly,—either mildew, or rot on the bush. They are apt to Johnsonise,—rot on the stem. I shall watch the Doolittles.

FOURTH WEEK.

ORTHODOXY 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-depravity figure about the snake-grass, or quack-grass, as some call it; and those two did not bring hoes. There seems to be a lack of disposition to hoe among our educated clergy. I am bound to say that these two, 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 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 wouldn’t give twenty cents for my figure. He said that the snake-grass was not in my garden originally, that it sneaked in under the sod, and that it could be entirely rooted out with industry and patience. I asked the Universalist-inclined man to take my hoe and try it; but he said he hadn’t time, and went away.

But, _jubilate_, I have got my garden all hoed the first time! I feel as if I had put down the rebellion. Only there are guerillas left here and there, about the borders and in corners, unsubdued,—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. Several times, in its progress, I was tempted to do as Adam did, who abandoned his garden on account of the weeds. (How much my mind seems to run upon Adam, as if there had been only two really moral gardens,—Adam’s and mine!) The only drawback to my 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 labour: 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, contemplating a garden hoed. Alas! it is a dream not to be realised 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 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. What is a garden for? The pleasure of man. I should take much more pleasure in a shady garden. Am I to be sacrificed, broiled, roasted, for the sake of the increased vigour of a few vegetables? The thing is perfectly absurd. If I were rich, I think I would have my garden covered with an awning, so that it would be comfortable to work in it. It might roll up and be removable, as the great awning of the Roman Coliseum was,—not like the Boston one, which 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 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 hospitable 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 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-beds. She was working away at the bed with a little hoe. Whether women ought to have the ballot or not (and I have a decided opinion on that point, which I should here plainly give, did I not fear that it would injure my 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 had scratched it: there was that touching unevenness about it. I think no one could look at it and not be affected. To be sure, Polly smoothed it off with a rake, and asked me if it wasn’t nice; and I said it was. It was not a favourable time for me to explain the difference between puttering 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 constituted, I think more of Polly’s honest and anxious care of her plants than of the most finished gardening in the world.

SIXTH WEEK.

Somebody has sent me a new sort of hoe, with the wish that I should speak favourably of it, if I can consistently. I willingly do so, but with the understanding 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 recommendation is shifted upon the wife of the editor or clergyman. Polly says she is entirely willing to make a certificate, accompanied with an affidavit, with regard to this hoe; but her habit of sitting about the garden-walk, on 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 widespread. When I got this hoe, I was troubled with sleepless mornings, pains in the back, kleptomania with regard to new weeders; when I went into 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 disappeared. Trying it a third morning, I was obliged to throw it over the fence, in order to save from destruction the green things that ought to grow in the garden. Of course this is figurative language. What I mean is, that the fascination of using this hoe is such that you are sorely tempted to employ it upon your vegetables after the weeds are laid low and must hastily withdraw it to avoid unpleasant results. I make this explanation because I intend to put nothing into these agricultural papers that will not bear the strictest scientific investigation; nothing that the youngest child cannot understand and cry for; nothing that the oldest and wisest men will not need to study with care.

I need not add, that the care of a 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-labourer, you might see at night where he had been working.

Let us have peas. I have been a zealous advocate of the birds. I have rejoiced in their multiplication. I have endured their concerts at four o’clock in the morning without a murmur. Let 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 magnificent animal, of the sex which votes (but not a pole-cat),—so large and powerful that, if he were in the army, he would be called Long Tom. He is a cat of fine disposition, the most irreproachable morals I ever saw thrown away in a cat, and a splendid hunter. He spends his nights, not in social 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 growing, the blowing, the podding! What a touching thought it was that they had all podded for me! When I went to pick them, I found the pods all split open, and the peas gone. The dear little birds, who are so fond of the strawberries, had eaten them all. Perhaps there were left as many as I planted: I did not count them. I made a rapid estimate of the cost of the seed, the interest of the ground, the price of labour, 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 Calvin. I lavished upon him an enthusiastic fondness. 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 opinion into English (instead of his native catalogue), it would have been: “You need not teach your grandmother to suck eggs.” It was only the round of Nature. The worms eat a noxious something in the ground. The birds eat the worms. Calvin eats the birds. We eat—no, we do not eat Calvin. There the 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 raising peas. It occurs to me that I can have an iron pea-bush, a sort of trellis, through which I could discharge electricity at frequent intervals, and electrify the birds to death when they alight; for they stand upon my beautiful bush, 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 neighbour suggests that I might put up a scarecrow near the vines, which would keep the birds away. I am doubtful about it: the birds are too much accustomed to seeing a person in poor clothes in the garden to care much for that. Another neighbour suggests that the birds do not open the pods; that a sort of blast, apt to come after rain, splits the pods, and the birds then eat the peas. It may be so. There seems to be complete unity of action between the blast and the birds. But good neighbours, kind friends, I desire that you will not increase, by talk, a disappointment which you cannot assuage.

_Charles Dudley Warner._

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_THE QUAKER COQUETTE._

DEAR coy coquette, but once we met—
But once, and yet ’twas once too often,
Plunged unawares in silvery snares,
All vain my prayers her heart to soften;
Yet seems so true her eyes of blue,
Veined lids and longest lashes under,
Good angels dwelt therein, I felt,
And could have knelt in reverent wonder.

Poor heart, alas! what eye could pass
The auburn mass of curls caressing
Her pure white brow, made regal now
By this simplicity of dressing.
Lips dewy, red as Cupid’s bed
Of rose-leaves shed on Mount Hymettus,
With balm imbued they might be wooed,
But ah! coy prude, she will not let us.

No jewels deck her radiant neck—
What pearl could reck its hue to rival?
A pin of gold—the fashion old—
A ribbon-fold, or some such trifle;
And—beauty chief! the lily’s leaf
In dark relief sets off the whiteness
Of all the breast not veiled and pressed
Beneath her collar’s Quaker tightness.

And milk-white robes o’er snowier globes
As Roman maids are drawn by Gibbon,
With classic taste are gently braced
Around her waist beneath a ribbon;
And thence unrolled in billowy fold
Profuse and bold—a silken torrent—
Not hide, but dim each rounded limb,
Well-turned, and trim, and plump, I warrant.

Oh, Quaker maid, were I more staid,
Or you a shade less archly pious;
If soberest suit from crown to boot
Could chance uproot your Quaker bias,
How gladly so, in weeds of woe,
From head to toe my frame I’d cover,
That in the end the convert “friend”
Might thus ascend—a convert lover.

_Charles Graham Halpin._

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_CAT-FISHING._

MANY and ingenious are the remedies that have been proposed for nocturnal cats, but none of them seem to have proved thoroughly successful. It was pointed out not very long ago that the extirpation of all fences which run in a direction parallel, or nearly parallel, with the Equator, would exempt cats from electrical difficulties in their internal organs, and would thus hush the cries that now render night hideous; but there is a practical difficulty in dispensing with these fences. Another remedy, which is a certain cure for nocturnal cats, is suggested by the fact that cats cannot live at a greater elevation than 13,000 feet above the sea. If we build our back fences 13,500 feet high, not a cat will scale their lofty summits; but the labour and expense of constructing fences of this height would be so great as to forbid their erections by persons with small incomes. Mere palliatives, such as bootjacks and lumps of coal, never accomplished any lasting benefits; they may discourage an occasional cat, but his place will instantly be filled. With all their habitual caution, cats are bold, and will often rush in where an average angel would fear to tread. To deal effectually with them is a task which calls for the highest form of inventive genius, combined with patience and a reckless indifference to Mr. Bergh’s opinions.