“I really believe, sir, that the literature of the garden, so abundant everywhere, is written in the interest of suburban land-owners.  The inviting one-sided picture so persistently held up is only a covert bit of advertising, intended to seduce away happy cockneys of the town—­men supremely contented with their attics, their promenades in Fifth Avenue, their visits to Central Park, where all is arranged for them without their labor or concern, their evenings at the music gardens, their soft morning slumbers, which know no dreadful chills and dews!  How could a back-ache over the pea-bed compensate for these felicities?  How could sour cherries, or half-ripe strawberries, or wet rosebuds, even if they do come from one’s own garden, reward him for the lose of the ease and the serene conscience of one who sings merrily in the streets, and cares not whether worms burrow, whether suns burn, whether birds steal, whether winds overturn, whether droughts destroy, whether floods drown, whether gardens flourish, or not?”—­Bachelor Bluff:  his Opinions, Sentiments, and Disputations.

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.

(BORN, 1829.)

* * * * *

GARDEN ETHICS.

I believe that I have found, if not original sin, at least vegetable total depravity in my garden; and it was there before I went into it.  It is the bunch-, or joint-, or snake-grass,—­whatever it is called.  As I do not know the names of all the weeds and plants, I have to do as Adam did in his garden,—­name things as I find them.  This grass has a slender, beautiful stalk:  and when you cut it down, or pull up a long root of it, you fancy it is got rid of; but in a day or two it will come up in the same spot in half a dozen vigorous blades.  Cutting down and pulling up is what it thrives on.  Extermination rather helps it.  If you follow a slender white root, it will be found to run under the ground until it meets another slender white root; and you will soon unearth a network of them, with a knot somewhere, sending out dozens of sharp-pointed, healthy shoots, every joint prepared to be an independent life and plant.  The only way to deal with it is to take one part hoe and two parts fingers, and carefully dig it out, not leaving a joint anywhere.  It will take a little time, say all summer, to dig out thoroughly a small patch; but if you once dig it out, and keep it out, you will have no further trouble.

I have said it was total depravity.  Here it is.  If you attempt to pull up and root out sin in you, which shows on the surface,—­if it does not show, you do not care for it,—­you may have noticed how it runs into an interior network of sins, and an ever-sprouting branch of these roots somewhere; and that you cannot pull out one without making a general internal disturbance, and rooting up your whole being.  I suppose it is less trouble to quietly cut them off at the top—­say once a week, on Sunday, when you put on your religious clothes and face,—­so that no one will see them, and not try to eradicate the network within.