78 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 



asked me if I pursued an original course, or 

 whether I got my ideas from writers on the sub- 

 ject. I told him that I had had no time to read 

 anything on the subject since I began to hoe, 

 except " Lothair," from which I got my ideas of 

 landscape-gardening ; and that I had worked the 

 garden entirely according to my own notions, 

 except that I had borne in mind his injunction, 

 "to fight it out on this line if" The President 

 stopped me abruptly, and said it was unneces- 

 sary to repeat that remark : he thought he had 

 heard it before. Indeed, he deeply regretted 

 that he had ever made it. Sometimes, he said, 

 after hearing it in speeches, and coming across 

 it in resolutions, and reading it in newspapers, 

 and having it dropped jocularly by facetious 

 politicians, who were boring him for an office, 

 about twenty-five times a day, say for a month, 

 it would get to running through his head, like 

 the " shoo-fly " song which B tl r sings in the 



