42 THE MANSE GARDEN. 



in the 'squire's garden, the rich profusion of green- 

 gages and of magnums, like the golden eggs of yore, 

 and have wondered why they have none at the manse. 

 Andrew blames the nursery-man for cheating in the 

 matter of grafts, and you suspect the soil. This is 

 really too bad, to have nothing for the teeth to have 

 the best soil, a wall that did not come there without 

 expense; not forgetting your account current with the 

 man of price ; and to have no other produce than a 

 set of bare, knotty, gnarled old poles, held up to the 

 beauteous sun with shreds of old hat or pieces of 

 shoe leather; and all this, because your man of science 

 cannot see why the plum should differ from the pear. 

 I would exhort you not to suffer ugliness, sterility, 

 conceit, and useless expense. If you do not choose 

 to notice what part of a tree is made for bearing fruit, 

 and tell Andrew to spare that, or put in a nail your- 

 self, lay the axe to every root, and plant ivy, which 

 will train itself, look beautiful, and cost nothing. 



As in the fruit department, so in the vegetable. 

 Dinner on the table, you have nothing but potatoes : 

 and an^apology is made, alleging the badness of the 

 garden. The truth is, your man, going to all places, 

 remembers nothing about any place ; and the suc- 

 cession of cropping, as necessary to the garden as to 

 the glebe, is a matter of chance. Hence your cauli- 

 flowers, having succeeded late cabbages, instead of 

 swelling to a noble bumpy head that might please a 

 phrenologist, are mere buttons; and so of the rest. 

 Yet no expense is spared; the garden consumes a 

 great deal of manure, as much as might help a large 

 field of wheat, besides incurring a considerable debit 

 for seeds and plants ; and not a little for whole days, 



