172 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 



to have certain things in his garden. Not to 

 raise cabbage is as if one had no pew in church. 

 Perhaps we shall come some day to free churches 

 and free gardens ; when I can show my neighbor 

 through my tired garden, at the end of the sea- 

 son, when skies are overcast, and brown leaves 

 are swirling down, and not mind if he does raise 

 his eyebrows when he observes, " Ah ! I see 

 you have none of this, and of that." At pres- 

 ent we want the moral courage to plant only 

 what we need ; to spend only what will bring 

 us peace, regardless of what is going on over 

 the fence. We are half ruined by conformity ; 

 but we should be wholly ruined without it : and 

 I presume I shall make a garden next year that 

 will be as popular as possible. 



And this brings me to what I see may be a 

 crisis in life. I begin to feel the temptation of 

 experiment. Agriculture, horticulture, floricul- 

 ture, these are vast fields, into which one may 



