Two dusky small boys were quarreling; one was pouring forth a volume of
vituperous epithets, while the other leaned against a fence and calmly
contemplated him. When the flow of language was exhausted he said:

"Are you troo?"

"Yes."

"You ain't got nuffin' more to say?"

"Well, all dem tings what you called me, you is."

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN

SECOND WEEK

Next to deciding when to start your garden, the most important matter is
what to put in it. It is difficult to decide what to order for dinner on
a given day: how much more oppressive is it to order in a lump an
endless vista of dinners, so to speak! For, unless your garden is a
boundless prairie (and mine seems to me to be that when I hoe it on hot
days), you must make a selection, from the great variety of vegetables,
of those you will raise in it; and you feel rather bound to supply your
own table from your own garden, and to eat only as you have sown.

I hold that no man has a right (whatever his sex, of course) to have a
garden to his own selfish uses. He ought not to please himself, but
every man to please his neighbor. I tried to have a garden that would
give general moral satisfaction. It seemed to me that nobody could
object to potatoes (a most useful vegetable); and I began to plant them
freely. But there was a chorus of protest against them. "You don't want
to take up your ground with potatoes," the neighbors said; "you can buy
potatoes" (the very thing I wanted to avoid doing is buying things).
"What you want is the perishable things that you cannot get fresh in the
market." "But what kind of perishable things?" A horticulturist of
eminence wanted me to sow lines of strawberries and raspberries right
over where I had put my potatoes in drills. I had about five hundred
strawberry plants in another part of my garden; but this fruit-fanatic
wanted me to turn my whole patch into vines and runners. I suppose I
could raise strawberries enough for all my neighbors; and perhaps I
ought to do it. I had a little space prepared for melons--muskmelons,
which I showed to an experienced friend. "You are not going to waste
your ground on muskmelons?" he asked. "They rarely ripen in this climate
thoroughly before frost." He had tried for years without luck. I
resolved not to go into such a foolish experiment. But the next day
another neighbor happened in. "Ah! I see you are going to have melons.
My family would rather give up an