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.
[Illustration: “WHEN THEY BREAK INTO THE GARDEN.”]
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.
[Illustration: “THESE TWO SAT AND WATCHED MY VIGOROUS COMBATS WITH THE
WEEDS.”]
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._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_THE QUAKER COQUETTE._
[Illustration: “DEAR COY COQUETTE, BUT ONCE WE MET.”]
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._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_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.
[Illustration: “THE YOUNG MAN BECAME GREATLY FASCINATED WITH HIS NEW
OCCUPATION.”]
The young man in West Thirty-fifth Street who lately introduced
cat-fishing as a manly and beneficent sport, can scarcely be said to
have devised an absolute specific for cats, but he has unquestionably
contributed to lessen the number of cats in his immediate vicinity.
Early last fall a vast area of cats, accompanied with marked depression
of the spirits of the inhabitants of West Thirty-fifth Street,
overspread that unfortunate region. After a thorough trial of most of
the popular remedies, a young man residing on the block between Fifth
and Sixth Avenues, and who may be called—not necessarily for
publication, but as a guarantee of good faith—by the name of Thompson,
hit upon the idea of angling for cats. To the end of a strong blue-fish
line he affixed a salmon hook, baited with delicate morsels of meat. At
first this hook, deftly dropped from the back window, was permitted to
lie on top of the back fence. The first cat that passed over the fence
would investigate the bait, and finding it apparently free from fraud,
would begin to eat it. A slight pull at the line would usually fix the
hook in the cat’s mouth, and the angler would haul in his prey and knock
it on the head. It frequently happened, however, that the cat would not
be successfully “struck,” and would escape and warn his associates to
beware of concealed hooks. Moreover, the angler had his bait gorged,
upon one occasion, by a tramp, who had climbed the fence with a view to
gaining access to the kitchen; and though the game was successfully
landed in the second-storey back room, and, after being goffed with a
sword-bayonet, he had so much difficulty in subsequently disposing of
the body that he dreaded a repetition of the incident. He therefore
altered his methods of angling, and adopted a modified style of
fly-fishing.
This latter sport was carried on with the aid of a long bamboo
fishing-pole. The hook was baited as before, but instead of being
permitted to lie on the top of the fence, was suffered to dangle in the
air, about two feet above it. As soon as a cat perceived the bait, he
assumed with the intense self-conceit characteristic of his race, that
it was a supernatural recognition of his extraordinary merits, and could
be fearlessly appropriated. In order to seize it he was, of course,
compelled to leap upwards, and it was very seldom that he failed to hook
himself. By this plan, not only was the necessity of “striking” the cat
obviated, but the danger that the bait would be seized by tramps was
greatly lessened, while the excitement and interest of the sport were
increased.