TREE-PLANTING. 9 



is burdened with care, nor is its limit so small that 

 he is cramped and thwarted by line fences. If 

 he can give to his bit of Eden but little thought 

 and money, he will find that an acre can be so 

 laid out as to entail comparatively small expense 

 in either the one or the other; if he has the time 

 and taste to make the land his play-ground as well 

 as that of his children, scope is afforded for an 

 almost infinite variety of pleasing labors and in- 

 teresting experiments. When we come to co- 

 work with Nature, all we do has some of the 

 characteristics of an experiment. The labor of 

 the year is a game of skill, into which also enter 

 the fascinating elements of apparent chance. What 

 a tree, a flower, or vegetable bed will give, depends 

 chiefly upon us; yet all the vicissitudes of dew, 

 rain, frost, and sun, have their part in the result. 

 We play the game with Nature, and she will usually 

 let us win if we are not careless, ignorant, or stupid. 

 She keeps up our zest by never permitting the 

 game to be played twice under the same condi- 

 tions. We can no more carry on our garden this 

 season precisely as we did last year than a captain 

 can sail his ship exactly as he did on the preceding 

 voyage. A country home makes even the weather 

 interesting; and the rise and fall of the mercury 

 is watched with scarcely less solicitude than the 

 mutations of the market. 



