rk, moodily, "do all kinds of things
in the Recess to make up for the inroads on the constitution suffered
during the Session. They go to La Bourboule like the MARKISS and
RAIKES; or they play Golf like Prince ARTHUR; or they pay visits to
their Mothers-in-law in the United States, like CHAMBERLAIN and LYON
PLAYFAIR; or they go to Switzerland, India, Russia, Australia, and
Sierra Leone. Now if we had a garden, which we dug, and weeded, and
clipped, and pruned ourselves, never eating a potato the sapling of
which we had not planted, watered, and if necessary grafted, with our
own hands, we should live happy, healthful lives for at least a month
or two, coming back to our work having renewed our youth like the
rhinoceros."

"But you don't know anything about gardening, do you?"

"That's just it. Anyone can keep a garden that has been brought up to
the business. But look what chances there are before two statesmen of,
I trust I may say without egotism, average intelligence, who take to
gardening without, as you may say, knowing anything about it. Think of
the charm of being able to call a spade a Hoe! without your companion,
however contentious, capping the exclamation. Then think of the long
vista of possible surprises. You dig a trench, and I gently sprinkle
seed in it--"

"Excuse me," I said, "but supposing _I_ sprinkle the seed, and _you_
dig the trench?"

"--The seed is carrot, let us suppose," the Member for Sark continued,
disregarding my interruption, his fine face aglow with honest
enthusiasm. "I, not being an adept, feeling my way, as it were,
towards the perfection of knowledge, put in the seed the wrong end
up, and, instead of the carrots presenting themselves to the earnest
inquirer in what is, I believe, the ordinary fashion, with the green
tops showing above the generous earth, and the spiral, rosy-tinted,
cylindrical form hidden in the soil, the limb were to grow out of
the ground, its head downward; would that be nothing, do you think? I
mention that only as a possibility that flashed across my mind. There
are an illimitable series of possibilities that might grow out of Our
Garden. Of course we don't mean to make money out of it. It's only
fair to you, TOBY, that I should, at the outset, beg you to hustle out
of your mind any sordid ideas of that kind. What we seek is, health
and honest occupation, and here they lie open to our hand."

This conversation, as I mentioned, took place a little more than