A Few Rules and Maxims. 273 



expectorate. He is not only versed in all the coarse gossip concerning his 

 neighbors, but also can talk by the hour of the short-comings of even their 

 horses and dogs. The virtues of man or beast, however, make but little 

 impression on what answers in his organism for a mind. That which is 

 good, wholesome and refined interests him no more than strawberries 

 would a buzzard. To the degree that he is active, he usually makes havoc. 

 The weeds do not suffer seriously from his efforts, but if you have a few 

 choice plants, a single specimen or two of something unpurchasable and 

 rare, or a seedling that you dream may have a future, the probabilities are 

 that, unless watched and warned, he will extirpate them utterly. It rarely 

 happens that you can teach this type of man better things. The leopard 

 may change his spots and the Ethiopian his skin, but this man though 

 resembling both outwardly, through his uncleanliness never changes. His 

 blunders, garrulity and brainless labor, however, would transform Izaak 

 Walton. himself into a dragon of irritability. The effort to reform such a 

 man would be heroic, indeed, but let those who enter upon such a task 

 give their whole souls to it, and not attempt gardening at the same time ; 

 unless the garden is maintained for the sake of the man, and they, in their 

 zeal, approach Titania in her midsummer-night's madness, when she bade 

 her attendant fairies to " feed " the " translated " weaver 



" With apricocks and dewberries, 

 " With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries. " 



This degenerate descendant of Bottom, however, needs no such consid- 

 erate attention ; he will help himself to the choicest and rarest. 



Scarcely better than the type portrayed above is the deliberate 

 workman, who can soon show you how easy it is to spend two dollars 

 in order to make one. He has lighted his pipe and sat down to a brief, 

 light task, as a noted general did before Richmond. His wages the 

 one thing he is prompt about will leave little margin of profit on the 

 berries that he has packed, although, by reason of his ancient pipe, they may 

 outrank all the fruit in the market. This man never walks nor runs, no 

 matter how great the emergency and press of work he merely jogs 

 around, and picks a raspberry as he would pry out a bowlder. He does 

 his work fairly well, usually ; but the fact that it would require a hundred 

 such men to care for a small place causes not the slightest solicitude. He 

 would smoke just as stolidly and complacently after bringing wreck and 

 ruin to a dozen employers. 



Men of these types are as disastrous on a fruit farm as the Lachnos- 

 terna or currant worm. Unless the reader has far more native goodness 

 35 



