24 THE MANSE GARDEN. 



a fence secure against all intruders be difficult, let 

 the difficulty be met by a greater namely, the 

 annoyance, in various ways, repeated daily, and con- 

 tinued all the years of your life. 



You have sown your small culinary and flower 

 seeds in fine season, and raked all in, neat and 

 clean; and when you look out to see whether the 

 young sprouts yet carry the dewdrop, you find a 

 lot of hens, like partridges under a dry hedge, 

 reveling in the luxury of filling their feathers 

 with the soil, and repaying what they take away 

 with the plumage which they leave. You have a 

 standard pear, whose quality you have secured by 

 grafting, and whose fruit you are waiting for year 

 after year; and that is the very tree around which 

 all the cats of the village choose to assemble for the 

 peculiar diversion of exercising their claws, piercing 

 the core, and making the bark to the touch of the 

 hand what the under part of a stirrup is to the foot. 

 And whilst your patience is thus under the claws of 

 the cat, that of your good wife is submitted to the 

 teeth of the rabbit. The early cauliflowers were 

 expected for a particular occasion ; but the munching 

 tribe, popping out and in at will, have not left a 

 green blade. You have a Ribston pippin on your 

 best wall, and every flower-bud is nibbled as neatly 

 off by the hares in the night time as if great industry 

 and a sharp knife had been employed all the day. 

 It may be some consolation, that though they have 

 taken the buds, you have still the branch ; and there 

 is no saying what may happen to the hares before 

 another winter ; but look to your espaliers, and you 

 will have no occasion to congratulate yourself on the 



