PREFACE TO NEW EDITION. 



"Play and Profit in My Garden" was the second 

 book that 1 wrote, and perhaps into no other have 

 I put so much of my own personality. As I read 

 it now, after the lapse of years, it vividly recalls a 

 period of life that would otherwise have been par- 

 tially forgotten and indistinct. I wrote it in my 

 early gardening enthusiasm, and much revision 

 might take all the life, freshness and realism from 

 the story, for it is a story of a garden. Manuals 

 have been and will be written by the score, but few 

 actual and truthful garden experiences have been 

 related. There is a difference between a garden 

 sermon and a garden biography. This book is the 

 latter. It gives the ancestry of a garden, its small 

 beginning, growth and maturity. Although the 

 reader may regard it as one of the " short and simple 

 annals of the poor," he may also conclude that if a 

 garden could be made in ground, much of which 

 was so unpromising, there would be a better chance 

 for him with his superior land. 



E. P. ROE. 



Cor nwall-on-the- Hudson, N. Y. y 

 May, 1886. 



