e taken
aback to find that a new enemy had turned up. The celery had just
rubbed through the fiery scorching of the drought, and stood a
faint chance to grow; when I noticed on the green leaves a big
green-and-black worm, called, I believe, the celery-worm: but I don't
know who called him; I am sure I did not. It was almost ludicrous that
he should turn up here, just at the end of the season, when I supposed
that my war with the living animals was over. Yet he was, no doubt,
predestinated; for he went to work as cheerfully as if he had arrived
in June, when everything was fresh and vigorous. It beats me--Nature
does. I doubt not, that, if I were to leave my garden now for a week,
it would n't know me on my return. The patch I scratched over for the
turnips, and left as clean as earth, is already full of ambitious
"pusley," which grows with all the confidence of youth and the skill of
old age. It beats the serpent as an emblem of immortality. While all
the others of us in the garden rest and sit in comfort a moment, upon
the summit of the summer, it is as rampant and vicious as ever. It
accepts no armistice.

FIFTEENTH WEEK

It is said that absence conquers all things, love included; but it
has a contrary effect on a garden. I was absent for two or three
weeks. I left my garden a paradise, as paradises go in this
protoplastic world; and when I returned, the trail of the serpent was
over it all, so to speak. (This is in addition to the actual snakes
in it, which are large enough to strangle children of average size.)
I asked Polly if she had seen to the garden while I was away, and she
said she had. I found that all the melons had been seen to, and the
early grapes and pears. The green worm had also seen to about half
the celery; and a large flock of apparently perfectly domesticated
chickens were roaming over the ground, gossiping in the hot September
sun, and picking up any odd trifle that might be left. On the whole,
the garden could not have been better seen to; though it would take a
sharp eye to see the potato-vines amid the rampant grass and weeds.

The new strawberry-plants, for one thing, had taken advantage of my
absence. Every one of them had sent out as many scarlet runners as
an Indian tribe has. Some of them had blossomed; and a few had gone
so far as to bear ripe berries,--long, pear-shaped fruit, hanging
like the ear-pendants of an East Indian bride. I could not but
admire the persistence of thes