THE MANSE GARDEN. 245 



Another expedient is to keep two horses, and rent 

 fifty acres to be wrought along with the glebe. But 

 then, alas ! no work is ever right, whether as to time 

 or place or quantity, without the constant eye of the 

 master; and the result is one of two the minister 

 either sinks his calling, or loses his substance and 

 becomes bankrupt. Such disasters, whether from 

 neighbourly quarrels or ruined affairs, have led to 

 the better resort of letting the glebe or of hiring a 

 plough ; and hence the man is no longer a necessary 

 appendage to the manse. But the minister is not 

 fit for the parish without a pony, and the pony can- 

 not be kept without a boy, who will be half and con- 

 sequently wholly idle if he have not other work to 

 do: Such is the garden implement now under con- 

 sideration. 



Whatever may be the outcry as to the uselessness 

 of this official, let it be remembered, in the first in- 

 stance, that he is indispensable to the pony, as the 

 pony is to the minister; and further, that he is, if 

 an idle boy, a substitute for an idle man a spectacle 

 less easy to be looked at. And as an encouragement 

 to choose the least of two evils, the author avers, 

 that the boy under proper direction is fully equal to 

 all the work of the garden, with the exception of 

 three or four days in the year, when better hands, 

 whether as to strength or skill, may be required to 

 lay up a winter furrow of deep digging, or to train a 

 fruit tree round the stalk of a chimney a height too 

 great, it may be, for the minister's nerve, and per- 

 haps for the decencies of his calling. This suffi- 

 ciency of the boy, however, presupposes on the 

 part of his master the possession of " My Book," 



