l rational beings.

"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