150 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 



exact moment between ripeness and decay 

 which it is so impossible to hit in practice. 

 Fruit cannot be raised on this earth to taste 

 as you imagine those pears would taste. For 

 years you have this pleasure unalloyed by 

 any disenchanting reality. How you watch 

 the tender twigs in spring, and the freshly 

 forming bark, hovering about the healthy 

 growing tree with your pruning-knif e many 

 a sunny morning ! That is happiness. 

 Then, if you know it, you are drinking the 

 very wine of life ; and when the sweet juices 

 of the earth mount the limbs, and flow down 

 the tender stem, ripening and reddening the 

 pendent fruit, you feel that you somehow 

 stand at the source of things, and have no 

 unimportant share in the processes of Na- 

 ture. Enter at this moment boy the de- 

 stroyer, whose office is that of preserver as 

 well ; for, though he removes the fruit from 

 your sight, it remains in your memory im- 

 mortally ripe and desirable. The gardener 

 needs all these consolations of a high phi- 

 losophy: 



