CHAPTER XIV 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS 



|BOTJT the Fourth of July my vegetable 

 garden was in the most flourishing 

 condition possible. My corn was thick 

 and straight and green, my beets were 

 bushy and the leaves purple and glossy. For 

 weeks I had luxuriated in salad from my lettuce- 

 rows, in radishes, exhumed from my own beds 

 and cut into fancy shapes, and in pie-plant, which 

 unfortunately I had received as courtesies from 

 my neighbors, as my fatal error in treating my 

 own plants as burdocks had prevented me from 

 enjoying my own products. 



I had even gone to the extent of pulling a few 

 potato-tops, hoping that their unusual develop- 

 ment might have produced new potatoes of avail- 

 able size; but what I found were seemingly 

 covered with warts and blisters, which rendered 

 them extremely unattractive in appearance, and 

 slimy and disagreeable to the touch. 



Shortly after the Fourth I engaged a man to 

 mow the grass-crop. He appeared with an as- 

 sistant, and after viewing the astonishing growth 

 of pigweed and other worthless vegetation, they 



