Yet, sad as my story is, I cannot regret that I came into the country and attempted a garden.  It has been fruitful in lessons, if in nothing else.  I have seen how every evil has its compensating good.  When I am tempted to repine that my squashes did not grow, I reflect, that, if they had grown, they would probably have all turned into pumpkins, or if they had stayed squashes, they would have been stolen.  When it seems a mysterious Providence that kept all my young hopes underground, I reflect how fine an illustration I should otherwise have lost of what Kossuth calls the solidarity of the human race,—­what Paul alludes to, when he says, if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it.  I recall with grateful tears the sympathy of my neighbors on the right hand and on the left,—­expressed not only by words, but by deeds.  In my mind’s eye, Horatio, I see again the baskets of apples, and pears, and tomatoes, and strawberries,—­squashes too heavy to lift,—­and corn sweet as the dews of Hymettus, that bore daily witness of human brotherhood.  I remember, too, the victory which I gained over my own depraved nature.  I saw my neighbor prosper in everything he undertook. Nihil tetigit quod non crevit. Fertility found in his soil its congenial home, and spanned it with rainbow hues.  Every day I walked by his garden and saw it putting on its strength, its beautiful garments.  I had not even the small satisfaction of reflecting that amid all his splendid success his life was cold and cheerless, while mine, amid all its failures, was full of warmth,—­a reflection which, I have often observed, seems to go a great way towards making a person contented with his lot,—­for he had a lovely wife, promising children, and the whole village for his friends.  Yet, notwithstanding all these obstacles, I learned to look over his garden-wall with sincere joy.

There is one provocation, however, which I cannot yet bear with equanimity, and which I do not believe I shall ever meet without at least a spasm of wrath, even if my Christian character shall ever become strong enough to preclude absolute tetanus; and I do hereby beseech all persons who would not be guilty of the sin of Jeroboam who made Israel to sin, who do not wish to have on their hands the burden of my ruined temper, to let me go quietly down into the valley of humiliation and oblivion, and not pester me, as they have hitherto done from all parts of the North-American continent, with the infuriating question, “How did you get on with your garden?”

* * * * *

LYRICS OF THE STREET.

I.

THE TELEGRAMS.

Bring the hearse to the station,
When one shall demand it, late;
For that dark consummation
The traveller must not wait. 
Men say not by what connivance
He slid from his weight of woe,
Whether sickness or weak contrivance,
But we know him glad to go. 
On, and on, and ever on! 
What next?