WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. l6l 



charming talk, as greedily as if his pockets had 

 been full of bon-bons. 



Perhaps this fact has no practical relation to 

 gardening ; but it occurs to me that, if I should 

 paper the outside of my high board fence with 

 the leaves of " The Arabian Nights," it would 

 afford me a good deal of protection, more, in 

 fact, than spikes in the top, which tear trousers 

 and encourage profanity, but do not save much 

 fruit. A spiked fence is a challenge to any 

 boy of spirit. But if the fence were papered 

 with fairy-tales, would he not stop to read them 

 until it was too late for him to climb into the 

 garden ? I don't know. Human nature is vi- 

 cious. The boy might regard the picture of the 

 garden of the Hesperides only as an advertise- 

 ment of what was over the fence. I begin to 

 find that the problem of raising fruit is nothing 

 to that of getting it after it has matured. So 

 long as the law, just in many respects, is in 



K 



