greengrocer might have been apotheosized into a merchant.  A dancing-master would flourish on the family-records as a professor of the Terpsichorean art.  A taker of daguerreotype portraits would never be recognized in “my great-grandfather the artist.”  But a barber is unmitigated and immitigable.  It cannot be shaded off nor toned down nor brushed up.  Besides, was greatness ever allied to barbarity?  Shakspeare’s father was a wool-driver, Tillotson’s a clothier, Barrow’s a linen-draper, Defoe’s a butcher, Milton’s a scrivener, Richardson’s a joiner, Burns’s a farmer; but did any one ever hear of a barber’s having remarkable children?  I must say, with all deference to my great-grandfather, that I do wish he would have been considerate enough of his descendants’ feelings to have been born in the old days when barbers and doctors were one, or else have chosen some other occupation than barbering.  Barber he did, however; in this very box he kept his wigs, and, painful as it was to have continually before my eyes this perpetual reminder of plebeian great-grand-paternity, I consented to it rather than lose my seeds.  Then I folded my hands in sweet, though calm satisfaction.  I had proved myself equal to the emergency, and that always diffuses a glow of genial complacency through the soul.  I had outwitted Halicarnassus.  Exultation number two.  He had designed to cheat me out of my garden by a story about land, and here was my garden ready to burst forth into blossom under my eyes.  He said little, but I knew he felt deeply.  I caught him one day looking out at my window with corroding envy in every lineament.  “You might have got some dust out of the road; it would have been nearer.”  That was all he said.  Even that little I did not fully understand.

I watched, and waited, and watered, in silent expectancy, for several days, but nothing came up, and I began to be anxious.  Suddenly I thought of my vegetable-seeds, and determined to try those.  Of course a hanging kitchen-garden was not to be thought of, and as Halicarnassus was fortunately absent for a few days, I prospected on the farm.  A sunny little corner on a southern slope smiled up at me, and seemed to offer itself as a delightful situation for the diminutive garden which mine must be.  The soil, too, seemed as fine and mellow as could be desired.  I at once captured an Englishman from a neighboring plantation, hurried him into my corner, and bade him dig me and hoe me and plant me a garden as soon as possible.  He looked blankly at me for a moment, and I looked blankly at him,—­wondering what lion he saw in the way.

“Them is planted with potatoes now,” he gasped, at length.

“No matter,” I returned, with sudden relief to find that nothing but potatoes interfered.  “I want it to be unplanted, and planted with vegetables,—­lettuce and—­asparagus—­and such.”

He stood hesitating.

“Will the master like it?”

“Yes,” said Diplomacy, “he will be delighted.”