OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES 



home, in which you take, and will never cease 

 to take, a personal interest and pride— if all 

 this be true, and you have as good as three 

 hours a day to devote to personal superintend- 

 ence — then, by all means, forswear all gar- 

 deners who come to you with great recom- 

 mendations of their proficiency. However 

 just these may be, all their accomplishments, 

 ten to one, will be only a grievance to you. 

 It is far better if you be really in earnest to 

 taste ruralities to the full, to find some honest, 

 industrious fellow — not unwilling to be taught 

 — who will lend a cheerful hand to your ef- 

 forts to work out the problem of life in the 

 country for yourself. 



You will blunder; but in such event you 

 will enjoy the blunders. You will burn your 

 young cabbages, but you will know better an- 

 other year. Your first grafts will fail, but you 

 will find out why they fail. You will put too 

 much guano to your sweet corn, but you will 

 have a pungent agricultural fact made clear to 

 you. You will leave your turnips and beets 

 standing too thickly in the rows ; but you will 

 learn by the best bf teaching — never to do so 

 again. You will buy all manner of fertilizing 

 nostrums— and of this it may require a year 

 or two to cure you. You will believe in every 



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