1 8 SUCCESS WITH SMALL FRUITS. 



disc, the reader will find described hereafter a list of fruits 

 that will enable him to reconstruct a bit of Eden, even if the 

 " Fall and all our woe " have left him possessed of merely a 

 city yard. But land in the country, breezy hillsides, moist, 

 sheltered valleys, sunny plains, — what opportunities for the 

 divinest form of alchemy are here afforded to hundreds of 

 thousands ! 



Many think of the soil only in connection v/ith the sad 

 words of the burial service, — " Earth to earth, ashes to 

 ashes." Let us, while we may, gain more cheerful associa- 

 tions with our kindred dust. For a time it can be earth to 

 strawberry blossoms, ashes to bright red berries, and their 

 color will get into our cheeks and their rich subacid juices 

 into our insipid lives, constituting a mental, moral, and phys- 

 ical alterative that will so change us that we shall believe in 

 evolution and imagine ourselves fit for a higher state of exist- 

 ence. One may delve in the earth so long as to lose all 

 dread at the thought of sleeping in it at last ; and the lus- 

 cious fruits and bright-hued flowers that come out of it, in 

 a way no one can find out, may teach our own resurrection 

 more effectually than do the learned theologians. 



We naturally feel that some good saints in the flesh, even 

 though they are " pillars of the church," need more than 

 a " sea-change " before they can become proper citizens of 

 " Jerusalem the Golden ; " but having compared a raspberry 

 bush, bending gracefully under its delicious burden, with 

 the insignificant seed from which it grew, we are ready to 

 believe in all possibilities of good. Thus we may gather 

 more than berries from our fruit-gardens. Nature hangs 

 thoughts and suggestions on every spray, and blackberry 

 bushes give many an impressive scratch to teach us that 

 good and evil are very near together in this world, and that 

 we must be careful, while seeking the one, to avoid the other. 



