my mind on nothing.  The affair assumes a high degree of importance.  I am satisfied with nothing but perfection.  I don’t know what may happen if the shade is not matched.  I go to another shop, and another, and another.  At last a pretty girl, who could make any customer believe that green is blue, matches the shade in a minute.  I buy five cents worth.  That was the order.  Women are the most economical persons that ever were.  I have spent two hours in this five-cent business; but who shall say they were wasted, when I take the stuff home, and Polly says it is a perfect match, and looks so pleased, and holds it up with the work, at arm’s length, and turns her head one side, and then takes her needle, and works it in?  Working in, I can see, my own obligingness and amiability with every stitch.  Five cents is dirt cheap for such a pleasure.

The things I may do in my garden multiply on my vision.  How fascinating have the catalogues of the nurserymen become!  Can I raise all those beautiful varieties, each one of which is preferable to the other?  Shall I try all the kinds of grapes, and all the sorts of pears?  I have already fifteen varieties of strawberries (vines); and I have no idea that I have hit the right one.  Must I subscribe to all the magazines and weekly papers which offer premiums of the best vines?  Oh, that all the strawberries were rolled into one, that I could inclose all its lusciousness in one bite!  Oh for the good old days when a strawberry was a strawberry, and there was no perplexity about it!  There are more berries now than churches; and no one knows what to believe.  I have seen gardens which were all experiment, given over to every new thing, and which produced little or nothing to the owners, except the pleasure of expectation.  People grow pear-trees at great expense of time and money, which never yield them more than four pears to the tree.  The fashions of ladies’ bonnets are nothing to the fashions of nurserymen.  He who attempts to follow them has a business for life; but his life may be short.  If I enter upon this wide field of horticultural experiment, I shall leave peace behind; and I may expect the ground to open, and swallow me and all my fortune.  May Heaven keep me to the old roots and herbs of my forefathers!  Perhaps in the world of modern reforms this is not possible; but I intend now to cultivate only the standard things, and learn to talk knowingly of the rest.  Of course, one must keep up a reputation.  I have seen people greatly enjoy themselves, and elevate themselves in their own esteem, in a wise and critical talk about all the choice wines, while they were sipping a decoction, the original cost of which bore no relation to the price of grapes.

NINETEENTH WEEK