84 STATE FOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



hiive caught the urcliin in the act; but, on second thought, I was glad I 

 did not. The interview would not have been pleasant. I shouldn't have 

 known what to do with hiin. Tiie cliances are that hi; would have escaped 

 away with his pockets full, and gibed at me from a safe distance. And if 

 I had got my hands on him, I should have been still more embarrassed. 

 If I had flogged him, he would have got over it a good deal sooner than 

 I should. That sort of boy does not mind castigation any more than he 

 does tearing his trousers on the briars. * * * 



"I found a man once in my raspberrj' bushes, early in the season, when 

 we Avere waiting for a dishful to ripen. Upon inquiring what he was 

 about, he said he was only eating some; and the operation seemed to be 

 so natural and simple that 1 disliked to disturb him. And I am not very 

 sure that one has a right to the whole of an abundant crop of fruit until 

 he has gathered it. * * * 



"A child is curious all over, and his curiosity is excited about as earlj^ 

 as his hunger. * * * Perhaps this fact has no practical relation to 

 gardening; but it occurs to me that, if I should paper the outside of my 

 high board fence with the leaves of the Arabian Nights, it would aflTord 

 me a good deal of protection, — more, in fact, than spikes in the top. which 

 tear trousers and encourage profanity, but do not save fruit. A spiked 

 fence is a challenge to any boy of spirit. But if the fence were papered 

 with fairy tales, would he not stop to read them until too late for him to 

 -climb into the garden? I don't know. Human nature is vicious. The 

 'boy might regard the picture of the garden of Hesperides only as an 

 advertisement of what was over the fence 1 begin to find that the 

 iproblem of raising fruit is nothing to that of getting it after it has 

 matured. So long as the law, just in many respects, is in force against 

 shooting birds and small boA's, the gardener may sow in tears and reap in 

 vain. 



* * "You buy and set out a choice pear tree.* ♦ At length it rewards your 

 •care by })roducing two or three pears, which you cut up and divide in the 

 family, declaring the flavor of the bit you eat to be something extraordi- 

 nary. The next year the little tree blossoms full, and sets well, and in 

 the autumn has on its slender, drooping limbs half a bushel of fruit, daily 

 growing more delicious in the sun. You show it to your friends, reading 

 to them the French name, which you can never remember, on the label; 

 you take an honest pride in the successful fruit of long care. That night 

 your pears shall be required of you b}' a boy I Along oomes an irresponsi- 

 ble urchin, who lias not been growing much longer than the tree, with 

 not twenty-five cents' worth of clotiiing on him, and in five minutes takes 

 off every pear, and retires into safe obscurity.* * * The boy goes on his 

 way — to Congress or the State Prison, in either place he will be accused 

 of stealins. perhaps wrongfull3^ You learn, in time, that it is better to 

 have had pears and lost them than not to have pears at all. You come to 

 know that the least (rarest) part of the pleasure of raising fruit is the 

 vulgar eating it. You recall your delight in conversing with the nur- 

 seryman, in looking at his illustrated catalogues, where all the pears are 



