TARRYTOWN LETTERS— VI. 



BY A. B. TARRYER. 



A CHAPTER ON WEEDING AND WEEDERS, HUMAN AND IMPLEMENTAL MRS. TARRYER AS A WEED EXTERMINATOR 



AND TRAINER OF FARMERS' WIVES GETTING NEAR TO NATURE OLD LOUDON AND 



MRS. TARRYER DO NOT AGREE. 



^fc!!^.LTHOUGH inclined to 

 stoutness — the only 

 thing she is jealous of 

 except creeping intruders 

 in ■ her garden — Mrs. 

 Tarryer is a great weed- 

 er. She is none of your 

 stooping, unseasonable, 

 thumb-and-finger weed- 

 ers, either ; but on time, 

 a stand-up, knock-down 

 and drag-out fighter, with 

 fit weapons of the Joshua 

 and Gideon pattern — revertible and with certain 

 improvements. She knows as well as they did 

 that weeds can be exterminated, if gardeners will 

 mind their business early and late, and quit raising 

 and scattering weed-seed on their neighbors. 



To provide good company for herself, and help- 

 meets for worthy young men of her acquaintance, 

 she takes choice girls into her kitchen — that being 

 the holy of holies for a family. In this way she 

 gets leisure to see to her garden. She is so certain 

 to have her cooks and laundresses fluttering their 

 afternoon ribbons out in it — quite leisurely — that it 

 seems, sometimes, as though she was running a 

 female agricultural college to train wives for farm 

 missionaries among the experiment stations. 



Her weight everybody else thinks is just about 

 right. She keeps it down by tempting other people 

 to eat heartily, or by weeding two rows to others' 

 one in the garden. She started that with women 

 and children, precisely as our factories, villages, 

 and greatest centers of business were started. The 

 more lovely young women she had, the more well- 

 behaved young men gathered around her and the 

 more she enlarged her garden. By furnishing tools 

 they could own and use for themselves, while they 

 were transacting their little and great personal and 

 social preparations for regenerating the world — all 

 under one — she always kept her garden in order. 



Weeding began in March and ended, in the gar- 

 den, sometime in December. In those days I had 

 to keep the horse-hoe running after the necessary 



hand-weeding had been done. Mrs. Tarryer was 

 too good a general to deploy her forces among fine 

 loose earth, to the needless making of tracks and 

 the dusting of stockings. She had tools for picking 

 (jut weeds in wet weather and between showers. 

 She considered the cases of the young men who 

 were liable to drop into the garden for an hour or 

 two, in fine weather, and being paired off, perhaps, 

 with expert and trusty maidens, among such or 

 such weediness (a most beautiful scene !), might 

 have their neatest garden-trousers and fair weather 

 slippers on — unless the lads went barefoot by 

 special permission, among delicate strawberry 

 runners or for coolness. There were reasons of 

 culture, also, and nitrification as well as weed- 

 killing, why loose earth should not be trampled 

 like pressed bricks, and why Mrs. Tarryer pre- 

 ferred small feet in her garden. 



During heated terms, days' works were often 

 done before breakfast, partly on account of freckles, 

 sure to poke into the closest sun-bonnet, where a 

 girl was any way sandy, and partly to see whether 

 young men would rise early upon occasion. On 

 hot and dewy iTiornings, in the midst of haying, or 

 when from catching weather, or any other reason, 

 young men were not much expected, it was ru- 

 mored that Mrs. Tarryer would kick her shoes and 

 stockings off for the luxury of feeling the cool loam. 

 She had no reason to be ashamed of her under-pin- 

 ning, and people who have never seen neat toes 

 peeping in and out among strawberry- vines, with 

 brown earth or pine-straw-mulch for a back-ground, 

 would be surprised to observe how much superior 

 they are to dull sunrises. 



In her way of making an out-door pleasure, and 

 a study in biology and natural history for young 

 people, of weeding, the form of her tools was a very 

 important question. She spent years of thought 

 and severest labor upon it. Being far-sighted her- 

 self and inclined to embonpoint, as before stated, 

 she did not squat to weed, saw no reason in her 

 young days for other people doing so, and contrived 

 her tools accordingly. Shrewd metropolitan man- 

 agers find that the most intellectual and gentle- 



