

KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 

reconciled to his oddities; and, finding him 
a most agreeable and intelligent companion, 
hoped that his sojourn might be longer. | 
“But, one evening when tea was prepared, 
and we expected him to join the family, he | 
was nowhere to be found. His grasses, and | 
other valuables, were all removed from his | 
room. The night was spent in searching for | 
him inthe neighborhood. No eccentric natu- | 
ralist could be discovered. Whether he had | 
perished ina swamp, or had been devoured 
by a bear or a garfish, or had taken to his 
heels, were matters of conjecture; nor was | 
it until some weeks after, that a letter from 
him, thanking us for our attention, assured | 
me of his safety.” 


UNCONSIDERED TRIFLES. 
“LITTLE THINGS.” 
“Wr HAVE RECENTLY HAD OCCASION,” | 

says the Editor of the Gardeners’ Journal, 
(from whose pages we borrow the following 
very sensible remarks), to visit one of the 
many great and well-managed gardens for 
which the North of England has long been 
famous. 
“In passing round the garden at the close 
of a day’s rain, and in places where the walks 
were bounded by trees, the heavy rains of | 
last month had so depressed the branches, | 
that at the time, owing to the stillness of the | 
air, they were weighed down, and holding a | 
goodly shower-bath of dew-drops on every | 
pendant twig. Some of these slender branches | 
—yielding to the weight of water which, forthe 
time, Nature had compelled them to carry— 
discharged, in one or two instances, the whole 
of their contents on the face and shoulders of 
the owner of the garden, with whom we were 
at the time walking. The dignity and equa- 
nimity of temper so peculiarly characteristic 
of the thorough-bred English gentleman, 
seemed for the instant to have been dashed | 
to the ground by the falling torrent ; and, in | 
an impulse of irritability, he drew his knife 
from his pocket, and cut down the twig which | 
had entrapped him into the utterance of angry | 
expressions, which we consider it better not to 
repeat. 
“ Amongst other things, he said :--‘ My 
gardener is a very good man, but will not be 
taught to value the importance of attending | 
to little things.’ We never on any occasion | 
saw or felt the force of this trite remark as 
we did on the occasion in question. Everyone | 
is familiar with the peculiarities of character 
for which the late Duke of Wellington was 
so remarkable—we mean the care and atten- 
tion which he insisted on paying to the details 
or ‘little things’ connected with all the great 
things which he undertook. It has also, as 
our readers well know, been often said of the 



late Napoleon, that he made it his special | 
‘of horticulture—such as 

159 
pride to boast of the attention which he paid 
to the details of all his great projects; even 
so far as to say, he knew how many hobnails 
were driven into the heel of every private 
soldier’s shoe throughout the lines; 4nd 
added, ‘Had I not attended to Wtle things, I 
should never have been fit to attend to great 
ones.’ 
“We mention these well-known incidents, 
to illustrate the importance of the principle, 
since we are all too ready to believe that 
greatness and great attainments come, some- 
how or other, by the neglect and contempt, 
rather than by the care and attention which 
we bestow on ‘little things.’ Nothing can 
be a more fatal error than such a conviction. 
It is the due attention to ‘ little things,’ at 
least in the culture and management of the 
garden, where alone true success must be 
looked for. For example, a gardener may be 
profoundly learned, experienced, and success- 
ful in the culture of the leading productions 
Peaches, Pine- 
apples, Grapes; and, it may be, ornamental 
stove and greenhouse plants. Possibly, too, 
there may be such a thing as special pride in 
the first-rate growth of some culinary pro- 
duction ; but what are any of these, after all, 
or what, we may ask, are all of them put to- 
gether, if many things besides are neglected? 
“Tf the owner of the garden, or any of his 
familiar friends, who may chance to stroll 
along the garden paths after a shower, or 
during a dewy morning, receive over their 
heads and shoulders at every few steps of the 
way something resembling a douche bath, 
from the wet dangling twigs, which the con- 
tempt for little things, and the neglect which 
such contempt is sure to beget, permit to 
grow there—we say, if a few instances of this 
kind be allowed to exist, more disappoint- 
ment, angry feeling, and unforgiving temper, 
will be the result, than if half the produce of 
the garden had been lost, from whatever 
cause. Such, at least, is our experience on 
points of this kind. Who indeed needs to 
be told that it is the ‘little things,’ not the 
great ones, which constitute the main enjoy- 
ments, a8 well as the annoyances of life ? 
“Surely no person who cares to cultivate 
the good-will and esteem of another (be he 
superior, or equal), will find himself success- 
ful by attending only to what he may consider 
the more important and greater things, while 
refusing to be taught the value of attending 
to ‘little things.’”’ 
There is so much real good sense conveyed 
in these observations, that we commend them 
most heartily to our readers’ notice. 
The half, at least, of one’s domestic hap- 
piness is forfeited by the neglect of an ob- 
servance of “little things.” The parting 
smile is sometimes forgotten. ‘ Somebody” 
gets an aching heart through this! 


