The American Garden, 



Fol. XIL JANUARY, i8gi. No. i. 



HICKORY CHIPS : 



'^iAVE always been bothered with 

 worms, bugs, grubs and insects. In 

 fact, they are a great nuisance. But 

 in the good old days, after I had 

 served my apprenticeship under a 

 man who knew more about garden- 

 ing than all this stripling generation 

 put together, I had very little trouble 

 with bugs and things. Then I took 

 the bug by the horns and pulled 

 him off, and after I had stepped 

 on him four or five times I knew that 

 he was dead enough to stay. But now I am certain 

 of nothing, except that nothing is certain. It is the 

 fashion in these times to harness up one's self with 

 knapsacks and pumps and squirt-guns and nozzles 

 and poisons and apparatus whenever a bug looks 

 over the fence, as if we were preparing for war 

 against the Goths and Vandals. For myself, I 

 don't believe in it ; but my boy Enoch, who has 

 graduated at the business college and has read all 

 the bulletins from Dan to Beersheba, is full of this 

 modern nonsense, and he wants to do everything 

 scientifically. Now I believe in boys, and I believe 

 that they should have a chance. It takes the con- 

 ceit out of them to let them have their own way, if 

 they fail in it, and I knew that it was only a matter 

 of time until Enoch would come back to his equilib- 

 rium. It would never do to let some boys have their 

 own way in following up these bug and blight pro- 

 fessors, for they like to spend money too well and 

 are inclined to shirk bug picking too much. But 

 Enoch is not one of this kind. He has inherited a 

 vigorous idea of things, and when he finds out that 

 a thing is of no use he is sure of it. 



Enoch grew potatoes. It was his way of getting 

 spending money and getting the knack of doing 

 things. But the bugs pestered him. At first he 



\ asaken with Professor Catchem's way of fenc 

 ing out the bugs. If he could keep the bugs away, 

 that was all there is of it ; he could go fishing un- 

 til digging time. I suggested that I did not see 

 how keeping a bug away was going to kill him, for if 

 he couldn't eat potatoes he would pitch onto the 

 peas or devour Deacon Brown's hollyhocks. But 

 Enoch said that he would fence in the peas too, 

 and he didn't care anything about anybody's holly- 

 hocks. But somehow the netting fences did not 

 work. In two hours after they were put on and 

 ucked up as neat as a pin " more'n a million- 

 bugs," as Enoch declared, would be holding high 

 carnival under the tents. Enoch said that they 

 liked it. It kept them warm and the old gobbler 

 could not catch them. "Grubs in the ground — 

 eggs on the leaves — good hatchery," this was 

 Enoch's sillygism. I suggested that he might fence 

 them in and keep them there. This was a new 

 idea, and Enoch took to it. This is characteristic 

 of the family. The next morning I saw him out 

 bright and early with mother's feather duster 

 swinging it lustily over the vines. 



" What are you doing, Enoch ? " I enquired. 



" Shooin' 'em in." 



" What are you going to do with them then ?" 



" Pester "em. Stick pins into 'em." 



But before noon I saw him pulling up his " bug- 

 gers," as he called his nets, and throwing them in 

 the fence corner. There was no use asking him 

 questions for I could not get a word out of him, 

 and as I do not believe in being inquisitous, I 

 stopped trying after a few days. But it was evi- 

 dent that Enoch's buggers didn't work ! 



At dinner Enoch was blue. He spilled his cof- 

 fee and forgot to fill his pockets with lumps of 

 sugar. When he got up he knocked over mother's 

 beefsteak geranium and broke a bud off the night- 



