TARRYTOWN LETTERS— VII. 



TOOLS WE HAVE TOO MUCH 



BY A. B. 



TT [ I LL of the wheel-hoe people, ap- 

 parently, have got our range, 



I^P^^^Id ^""^ ^^'^ showing their sympa- 



>^^*^K thy by firing circulars at us 



jM^^l!^ j from all points of the compass. 



^^L*f4^»\ j This is as it should be. But 

 ^ VJ while the good work of weed de- 

 struction goes on with all the weapons the law allows 

 us, Mrs. Tarryer wishes an irregular line of demarca- 

 tion drawn between wheel-hoes and the elegant and 

 deadly hand-weeders she prefers to patronize. She 

 has a few wheel-hoes up garret that would be in use, 

 no doubt, were our rig suitable for that running- 

 gear. Had we a ten-acre lot sowed with onions, I 

 might go down to Castle Garden and select some 

 unfortunate foreign brother, with a mild aspect and 

 an upper lip capable of stiffening, who wanted to 

 learn our language at a cheap rate, and turn him 

 into that lot with the wheel-hoes, and keep him go- 

 ing over and over those onions all summer. That 

 broad field work is the function of the wheel-hoe. 

 We should calculate to furnish a case of off-year, 

 filler tobacco, the same that we put a little of into 

 hens' nests (hoping it would not be accepted), and 

 that his friction and trampling to and fro would 

 keep the weeds down and have a tendency to crush 

 fungii and scare insects. The rattle of the machine 

 would tell when the man was sweating himself, and 

 he wouldn't be disturbed in his studies (except dur- 

 ing showery weather in haying) till he chose to 

 graduate or the onions were fit to harvest. 



The careful reader, several times over, of the 

 preceding Tarrytown Letter, will have discovered 

 that the above wheel-hoe system, though profitable 

 and easy for the master, and tolerable, when he 

 can't help himself, for the man who comes to this 

 country without any letters of introduction or affil- 

 iations with our international secret societies, would 

 not be social enough for Mrs. Tarryer. The onion- 

 field aforesaid may be regarded as a state of proba- 

 tion — quarantine ground — and the wheel-hoe as a 

 kind of out-doors treadmill, well calculated to test 

 the quality of the Prince Hamlets of Denmark, who 

 land on our shores incog., but not fit for the elect. 

 Mrs. Tarryer would be sure to know of any distin- 

 guished merit being in her neighborhood in humble 

 circumstances. In fact, I have just pictured, he- 



PEOPLE AND TOO FEW TOOLS. 

 TARRYER. 



tween my lines, the early career in this country of 

 a fait-haired and blue-eyed Scandinavian — a de 

 scendant of old Snorro's Harold, perhaps — who was 

 one of our first favorites some years ago, and is 

 now, with one of her graduates, occupying a place 

 of trust, where they will laugh long when they see 

 this allusion to themselves. 



Our sketch shows a young woman using one of 

 Mrs. Tarryer's thrust-hoes in the strawberry gar- 

 den ; extirpating every weed ; transplanting or plant- 

 ing or cutting off what runners she pleases without 

 touching a finger to the soil ; gently lifting and 

 breaking, around the young plants as well as in the 

 alleys, every particle of the crusted loam after a 

 puddling rain, leaving it a crumbling, cooling mulch, 

 fit to withstand midsummer heats or showers for 

 one while, and without a footstep showing.* This 

 is a very different thing from any wheel -hoe opera- 

 tion, planting purslane with every step as it goes. 

 You would think the fairies had done it, or it had 

 done itself, it seems so little laborious and so much 

 the work of culture and grace. 



Perhaps the engraver will not be able to show all 

 the details. Some things may as well be left to 

 the imagination of the student. Mrs. Tarryer looks 

 over my shoulder and says that a " Mr. Kit " is to 

 be understood facing this way, just the other side 

 of " Miss Kitty," and that he hears every word she 

 says, which could not be if they were rattling and 

 jamming wheel-hoes into that baked earth and 

 gravel. 



Wheel-hoes won't work everywhere. What would 

 those two young people do if they had a stiff row of 

 raspberries, blackberries or currant bushes between 

 them — what in a garden of roses with only wheel- 

 hoes for the tangled tillage ? As it is, with those 

 erect, stand-at-ease implements, we may imagine 

 them smiling the little-or-nothings at each other that 

 mean so much in such cases, and carrying on more 

 of the world's necessary business above than under 

 the raspberry bushes, while weeding the latter most 

 thoroughly. 



Or suppose the case of a neighbor's fence next 



*[The sketch ought to have shown all this : but the artist ga\ e up 

 in despair of bringing out all the excellent points of Mr. Tarryer's 

 description, partly for fear of offending Mrs. Tarryer, and so con- 

 tents himself with trying to represent the soil in its liard and unlioed 

 condition. — Ed.] 



