Address before the R. I. Horticultural Society. 511 



dearly bought imported pear stocks, he finds dependent thereon a fe^r 

 gnarled, wrinkled, warty excrescences, being apparently a cross from a 

 stringy turnip and a third rate potato. 



The experiences of the tyro-horticulturist are not entirely exempt from 

 similar degrees of perplexity sorely testing liis philosophy. There is a 

 charm in the close shaved lawn, in the well kept flower ground, and hard 

 rolled pathway. The shady trees and fragrant shrubbery, the murmuring 

 bees, the silvery brook, and the Claude landscape, with its setting siin, are 

 things which make the city visitor turn with abhorrence to his stifled home, 

 jammed with its fellows, looking alike uncomfortable, among kindred nui- 

 sances. He has not seen the means which bring about and preserve this 

 beauty, and in delightful simplicity supposes that the whole is the result of 

 a self-regulating machinery, that requires neither winding up nor repairing. 

 The hoeings and scufiings, the prunings and weedings, the sweepings and 

 rollings, and all the " hurry-skurry " of the morning, that the evening guest 

 may find order and repose, are not fathomed by the plummet of his imagi- 

 nation. He has rural longings which must be gratified, and, after much 

 seeking, he finds the paradise that is to embody his visions of earthly bliss. 

 Some lurking doubt of his own qualifications suggests the expediency of a 

 practical assistant, and he most effectually debars himself from obtaining 

 information by choosing for his prime minister an imported undeiling, who, 

 fresh from the drudgery of some long descended establishment of the old 

 world, feels authorized to transplant himself to the new, a full blown gar- 

 dener. Under the dictation of the latter', our beginner commences opera- 

 tions. He is told that every thing on the place is wrong ; that a radical 

 reform is necessary ; and the mode of management practised on the Duke's 

 estate, where his tormentor last bungled, is dinned into him, until he believes 

 there can be no other model, and blmdly submits to his " manifest destiny." 

 A fellow, who, in his own country, would not have been trusted to trim a 

 goosfcberry bush, now slashes and saws in orchard and garden, as though 

 he were still soaking in the humidity of his old home. The tree, which 

 tliere moulds in eternal damp, gasping tor a ray of sunshine, is here merci- 

 lessly laid open to the scorching sun of a New England summer, and to its 

 winter's cold and storms. He knows nothing of climate beyond the fogs 

 and drizzle of his native land. He, however, gains some knowledge in 

 destroying, awakening gradually to the astounding fact that difference of 

 position and circumstance requiies coiTCsponding management — a,nd his 

 education is paid for by his employer. The latter finds that the promised 

 beauties, which were to supersede the old arrangement, are slow in coming. 

 The lawn of velvet, the pride of English gardening, is merely a patch of 

 brown stubble; the hedge becomes lop heavy, presenting below a series of 

 archways for the accommodation of such animals as have no objection to 

 stooping. He sees that in the race between flowers and weeds, the latter 

 glory in an exuberance which defies competition, while the former are 

 behind time, b'ing "no where." He discovers that brooks perversely stop 

 running in summer, when most wanted, that no skill in hydraulics can make 

 a fountain play without water, and that tlie carefully constructed pond is 



