ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. 61 



may be, all their accomplishments, ten to one, will be 

 only a grievance to you. It is far better, if you be 

 really in earnest to taste ruralities to the full, to find 

 some honest, industrious fellow not unwilling to be 

 taught who will lend a cheerful hand to your efforts 

 to work out the problem of life in the country for 

 yourself 



You will blunder ; but in such event you will 

 enjoy the blunders. You will burn your young cab- 

 bages, but you will know better another year. Your 

 first grafts will fail, but you will find out why they 

 fail You will put too much guano to your sweet 

 corn, but you will have a pungent agricultural fact 

 made clear to you. You will leave your turnips and 

 beets standing too thickly in the rows ; but you will 

 learn by the best of teaching never to do so again. 

 You will buy all manner of fertilizing nostrums and 

 of this it may require a year or two to cure you. 

 You will believe in every new grape, or strawberry, 

 and of this it may require many years to cure you. 

 You will put faith, at the first, in all the horticultural 

 advices you find in the newspapers, and of this you 

 will speedily be cured. 



In short, whoever is serious about this matter, of 

 taking a home in the country (if his rural taste be a 

 native sentiment, and not a whim), should abjure the 

 presence of a surly master in the shape of a gardener, 



