156 SUCCESS WITH SMALL FRUITS. 



foliage that gave, even in the midst of the city, a suburban 

 seclusion. The honeysuckle and roses are at home in Nor- 

 folk, and their exquisite perfume floated to us across the 

 high garden fences. Thank heaven ! some of the best 

 things in the world cannot be walled in. St. Paul's Church 

 and quaint old burying-ground, shadowed by trees, fes- 

 tooned with vines, and gemmed with flowers, seemed so 

 beautiful, as we passed, that we thought its influence on the 

 secular material hfe of the people must be almost as good 

 through the busy week as on the Sabbath. 



The houses soon grew scattering, and the wide, level, 

 open country stretched away before us, its monotony broken 

 here and there by groves of pine. The shell road ceased 

 and our wheels now passed through many deep puddles, 

 which in Virginia seem sacred, since they are preserved 

 year after year in exactly the same places. A more varied 

 class of vehicles than we met from time to time would 

 scarcely be seen on any other road in the country. There 

 were stylish city carriages and buggies, grocer and express 

 wagons, great lumbering market trucks laden with barrels 

 of early cabbages, spring wagons, drawn by mules, piled up 

 with crates from many a strawberry field in the interior, and 

 so, on the descending scale, till we reach the two-wheeled, 

 primitive carts drawn by cows, — all converging toward some 

 Northern steamer, whose capacious maw was ready to re- 

 ceive the produce of the country. We had not proceeded 

 very far before we saw in the distance a pretty cottage, 

 sheltered by a group of tall, primeval pines, and on the right 

 of it a large barn-like building, with a dwelling, office, 

 smithy, sheds, etc., grouped about it. A previous visit 

 enabled me to point out the cottage as the home of the 

 proprietor, and to explain that the seeming barn was a 

 strawberry crate manufactory. As was the case on large 



