My Garden 81 



for a man absorbed in professional life, es- 

 pecially newspaper life, to get out of it, and 

 without capital as I was, the notion had some- 

 thing unpleasant about it. To cut loose from 

 an assured income was dangerous. The straw- 

 berries might not grow, the drought might kill 

 my blackberries, there might be a glut in the 

 market when I came to sell, even if I had any- 

 thing to sell. I might get tired of solitude, and 

 might yearn for the nervous activity of the city 

 again. I might come to think that a good opera 

 was worth a million strawberry plants, and the 

 end might be as most of my friends pre- 

 dicted that I should sell my ten acres at a 

 tremendous sacrifice, and take up my newspaper 

 work again under greater disadvantages than 

 ever. Nevertheless, so firmly was I convinced 

 that there is a joy in gardening well worth striv- 

 ing for, that when spring opened I took a little 

 house in New Jersey and began to feel my way 

 along. I was quite convinced that for a man 

 who knew nothing about gardening except 

 theoretically, only failure would result from 

 burning my ships behind me at once. So I 

 kept on with my work in the city, but moved 



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