ed in price, yet the hope of getting them grew fainter
and fainter under the reduction of wages, and hence my growing
impatience to achieve some more remunerative employment.

The bright spring at last opened kindly and genially upon us. The snow
disappeared, leaving my strawberries in the most healthy condition, and
free from the unsightly fringe-work of dead foliage which encircles
plants that have been compelled to go through a hard winter without
protection. I was exultant at the promise which their vigorous
appearance held forth. I even stole a view, through the cracks in the
fence, at those of our disagreeable neighbors, to see if they were doing
any better, and was gratified by finding that mine were equally thrifty.
Fred and I contrived to stir up the ground about them with heavy rakes,
though a harrow would have been more effective. April covered the whole
bed with a profusion of blossoms that even our experienced neighbors
could not exceed. They came often to our gate, and with more impudence
than I could muster when stealing an observation through their fence,
there they stood, two or three together, inspecting my beautiful rows
for an hour at a time. I wondered what they could find to interest them
so greatly, as in their eyes the sight could have been no novelty; but I
fear, that, if surprised at my success thus far, their wonder must have
been tinged with a jealousy that rendered the display as unpleasant to
them as it was encouraging to me.

No one ever watched the opening of the blossoms, their dropping off, and
the formation of the fruit, more attentively than I did. Every spare
hour was passed among them. The bees flew over the beds, dipping into
one flower after another, and filling the air with a perpetual humming.
Even at the earliest morning hour, when the sun had barely reached the
garden, I found them at their honeyed labors. The poet who declared that
many a flower was born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the
desert air, must have believed that the winged denizens of the air had
no inheritance in them,--that their sweets were wasted because no human
eye was present to admire them. I cannot agree with him; for here, when
our garden was a solitude, with no human eye to admire its wealth of
blossoms, they were thick with bees, and surely upon them their sweets
were far from being wasted. The flowers must have been created as much
for the enjoyment of nameless insects as for the gratific