the peculiar strength of man.  Where an ordinary woman will leave the beaten track, wandering in a thousand little by ways of her own,—­flowery and beautiful, it is true, and leading her airy feet to “sunny spots of greenery” and the gleam of golden apples, but keeping her not less surely from the goal,—­I march straight on, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, beguiled into no side-issues, discussing no collateral question, but with keen eye and strong hand aiming right at the heart of my theme.  Judge thus of the stern severity of my virtue.  There is no heroism in denying ourselves the pleasures which we cannot compass.  It is not self-sacrifice, but self-cherishing, that turns the dyspeptic alderman away from turtle-soup and the pate de foie gras to mush and milk.  The hungry newsboy, regaling his nostrils with the scents that come up from a subterranean kitchen, does not always know whether or not he is honest, till the cook turns away for a moment, and a steaming joint is within reach of his yearning fingers.  It is no credit to a weak-minded woman not to be strong-minded and write poetry.  She couldn’t, if she tried; but to feed on locusts and wild honey that the soul may be in better condition to fight the truth’s battles,—­to go with empty stomach for a clear conscience’s sake,—­to sacrifice intellectual tastes to womanly duties, when the two conflict,—­

  “That’s the true pathos and sublime,
  Of human life.”

You will, therefore, no longer withhold your appreciative admiration, when, in full possession of what theologians call the power of contrary choice, I make the unmistakable assertion that I am a woman.

Of the circumstances that led me to inchoate a garden it is not necessary now to speak.  Enough that the first and most important step had been taken, the land was bought,—­a few acres, with a smart little house peeking up, a crazy little barn tumbling down, and a dozen or so fruit-trees that might do either as opportunity offered, and I set out on my triumphal march from the city of my birth to the estate of my adoption.  Triumphal indeed!  My pathway was strewed with roses.  Feathery asparagus and the crispness of tender lettuce waved dewy greetings from every railroad-side; green peas crested the racing waves of Long Island Sound, and unnumbered carrots of gold sprang up in the wake of the ploughing steamer; till I was wellnigh drunk with the new wine of my own purple vintage.  But I was not ungenerous.  In the height of my innocent exultation, I remembered the dwellers in cities who do all their gardening at stalls, and in my heart I determined, when the season should be fully blown, to invite as many as my house could hold to share with me the delight of plucking strawberries from their stems and drinking in foaming health from the balmy-breathed cows.  Moreover, in the exuberance of my joy, I determined to go still farther, and despatch to those doomed ones who cannot