1895.] ESSAYS. 103 



smoke over a newspaper is worth more to our ordinary man than 

 vistas of roses with all their glowing tints and fragrance. No slur is 

 intended against either the cigar or the newspaper. If it is neither 

 of these it is something else, some "fad" which consumes time and 

 energy, and leaves the tending of Eden for the florist or someone else 

 to do. If men get more satisfaction out of something else than the 

 freshness and beauty of nature, with which he might easily surround 

 himself, well and good. "If folks like that sort of thing, why that's 

 the sort of thing they like"; and there's an end of it. The world 

 may remain a pretty scraggy and barren place, in large spots, at 

 least. Man has something more satisfying than anything that she can 

 produce without his aid, and he is too engrossed otherwise to lend a 

 hand. This is all very well. Each man to his taste. But there are 

 disagreeable complications, to say the least. 



When one son of Adam has followed his bent and has tended his 

 garden ; when his fruits and flowers are beginning to repay him for 

 his labor, — the taste of some other son of Adam suffers a sudden 

 reversion. Nothing seems to him so fair or desirable as choice 

 flowers, or so luscious as grapes, pears and peaches. He comes 

 around suddenly to his Edenic neighbor's point of view and begins to 

 make his life a burden by begging and stealing, and sending his little 

 children around to beg and steal ; or, worse still, with five cents to 

 make a weak pretence 1?o buy the good things of Eden. "Just one 

 flower," "only one apple" ; it looks awfully stingy to refuse so inno- 

 cent a request. But old-time rural ideas of above-board generosity 

 do not apply to the conditions of life in the city. Each one person, 

 as he or she asks for "just one," "only a few," forgets that if all 

 such who would be inclined to ask for the " only one" were satisfied, 

 not a single one would remain for the gardener himself. His trees, 

 vines and bushes would be stripped as bare and barren as the gravel- 

 pit next to his garden, or the back yards of his worthy neighbors, 

 who profess to different tastes and higher satisfactions than those 

 afforded by legitimate horticulture. This is a matter of the most 

 serious imi)ort, and I have never chanced to live in a city where it 

 demanded more speedy and vigorous treatment. Those who love 

 their gardens and do all in their power to make their homes and 

 grounds beautiful, are rewarded for their pains by having to fight off 

 the gentry of other tastes ; and worse than all the material loss of time 

 and apples, is the dreadful strain on good nature and loss of patience 

 which this state of affairs entails. To be obliged to stay at home 

 Sundays and keep watch all other days and sit up nights in order 



