CROPS AND PROFITS 



is not only a protection, but offers a pleasant 

 contrast of what the whole field might have 

 been, with what the garden now is. I must 

 confess that I love these savage waymarks of 

 progressive tillage — as I love to meet here and 

 there, some stolid old-time thinker, whom the 

 rush of modern ideas has left in picturesque 

 isolation. 



Time and again some enterprising gardener 

 has begged the privilege of uprooting this strip 

 of wildness, and trenching to the skirt of the 

 wall beyond it; but I have guarded the waste 

 as if it were a crop ; the cheewits and thrushes 

 make their nests undisturbed there. The long, 

 firm gravel-alley which traverses the garden 

 from north to south, traverses also this bit of 

 savage shrubbery, and by a latticed gate, opens 

 upon smooth grass-lands beyond, which are 

 skirted with forest. 



Within this tangle-wood, I have set a few 

 graftlings upon a wild-crab, and planted a 

 peach or two — only to watch the struggle 

 which these artificial people will make with 

 their wild neighbors. And so various is the 

 growth within this limited belt, that my chil- 

 dren pick there, in their seasons, — luscious 

 dew-berries, huckle-berries, wild raspberries, 

 bill-berries, and choke-berries; and in autumn, 



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