“What do you expect will be the market-value of that crop?”

“Wealth which an empire could not purchase,” I answered, with enthusiasm.  “But I shall not confine my attention to flowers.  I shall make the useful go with the beautiful.  I shall plant vegetables,—­ lettuce, and asparagus, and—­so forth.  Our table shall be garnished with the products of our own soil, and our own works shall praise us.”

There was a pause of several minutes, during which I fondled the seeds and Halicarnassus enveloped himself in clouds of smoke.  Presently there was a cessation of puffs, a rift in the cloud showed that the oracle was opening his mouth, and directly thereafter he delivered himself of the encouraging remark,—­

“If we don’t have any vegetables till we raise ’em, we shall be carnivorous some time to come.”

It was said with that provoking indifference more trying to a sensitive mind than downright insult.  You know it is based on some hidden obstacle, palpable to your enemy, though hidden from you,—­and that he is calm because he know that the nature of things will work against you, so that he need not interfere.  If I had been less interested, I would have revenged myself on him by remaining silent; but I was very much interested, so I strangled my pride and said,—­

“Why not?”

“Land is too old for such things.  Soil isn’t mellow enough.”

I had always supposed that the greater part of the main-land of our continent was of equal antiquity, and dated back alike to the alluvial period; but I suppose our little three acres must have been injected through the intervening strata by some physical convulsion, from the drift, or the tertiary formation, perhaps even from the primitive granite.

“What are you going to do?” I ventured to inquire.  “I don’t suppose the land will grow any younger by keeping.”

“Plant it with corn and potatoes for at least two years before there can be anything like a garden.”

And Halicarnassus put up his pipe and betook himself to the house, and I was glad of it, the abominable bore! to sit there and listen to my glowing schemes, knowing all the while that they were soap-bubbles.  “Corn and potatoes,” indeed!  I didn’t believe a word of it.  Halicarnassus always had an insane passion for corn and potatoes.  Land represented to him so many bushels of the one or the other.  Now corn and potatoes are very well in their way, but, like every other innocent indulgence, carried too far, become a vice; and I more than suspected he had planned the strategy simply to gratify his own weakness.  Corn and potatoes, indeed!