TARRYTOWN LETTERS— VIII. 



A FRAUD IN TROWELS A MODEL GARDEN LINE AND REEL IDEAS ON WEEDERS ARE PRECIOUS 



A HOE INVESTIGATION MORE ABOUT GRASS. 



BY A. B. TARRYER. 



VR young people get in the way of 

 using certain garden tools and con- 

 veniences while they are with us 

 which they don't easily find in mar- 

 ket when they go away, and this 

 state of trade makes the motherly 

 heart of Mrs. Tarryer a great deal 

 of trouble and correspondence. 

 The garden trowel, for instance, as administered 

 is a perfect fraud. It proves that the devil is in 

 the garden. The truth is that the regular mason's 

 trowel, in its different sizes — for pointing, etc. — is 

 the handiest and cheapest trowel for all garden pur- 

 poses, and I trust this sentiment will go into the 

 next issue of general orders by the Masonic Fra- 

 ternity. A moulder's trowel, also, is a beautiful im- 

 plement — highly polished and of exquisite temper — 

 for a lady's hand. Now, when an iron manufac- 

 turer dies, or gets on his death-bed, and has given 

 away several hundred thousands, won by cheating 

 Yankee notions, to build churches, his last thought 

 seems to be of some good-for-nothing lot of iron, 

 and he says, Make that into garden trowels!" Only 

 so can we account for the rotten and rusty old blades 

 we have to contend with under that name. The 

 curved form of the blade is of no advantage, but 

 rather an impediment to the use of the tool in any 

 gardening operation. Away with it, and let the gen- 

 uine trowel, honored of all ages, supersede the bo- 

 gus one. You can split a brick with it or cut a sod 

 if you want to. We are sure of good steel that will 

 keep bright in a mason's trowel. 



***-)(■***** 

 In garden reels and lines also, evolution has gone 

 backward. Ask one of the agricultural dealers that 

 spring up in a night with a few buckets of seeds in 

 the window, for a garden line, and the chances are 

 that he will show jute bed-cord, or if he thinks us 

 as big a fool as he is, with more money, he will 

 hand out some linen cord for window weights. Jute 

 is the rottenest cheap fiber, while flax is little better 

 when exposed to dampness and mildew. Cotton is 

 ten times as durable in wet and dirt as either, and 

 in the machine-braided form of " banding," in use in 

 our mills everywhere, is the millennial stuff for gar- 



den lines. Enclosed please find a sample, marked 

 in feet with India ink, as Mrs. Tarryer has used it 

 with joy for years. Being hollow it dries out quick- 

 ly, and neither kinks or breaks. "No. 64" is the 

 proper size for the garden. "Write at once to 

 your Congressman for it."* 



In foolish garden reels, bogus manufacture can 

 no farther go. It has discovered how to make the 

 most vexatiously worthless thing possible of cast- 

 iron — only fit to stick in trout ponds to keep thieves 

 from drawing nets in the night — and trade is abso- 

 lutely dead. People have got tired of asking for 

 garden reels. They'd rather have sticks out of the 

 wood-pile. Mrs. Tarryer and I went into seven 

 "agricultural" stores in three New England cities, 

 and in four of these stores she had to make pictures 

 of what she was after to let the gosling clerks know 

 what she wanted, although there were plenty of 

 those cast-iron reels in stock ! 



Intelligent free-traders and protectionists, if there 

 are any such, will perceive that the dogmas of both 

 sides amount to nothing in respect to garden reels, 

 while the present manufacture continues. The 

 spool part of the reel may as well be of malleable 

 iron, but the present models are faulty in two very 

 important particulars : There need be no spur on 

 the bottom of the reel to stick in the ground and 

 chafe one's knuckles while winding up the line ; for 

 by simply turning the line under and up on the other 

 side of the bottom of the spool, when the line is 

 stretched, the reel holds the line fast at any desired 

 point in its length. The second fault is that the 

 rims of the spools are so little wider than the rough 

 rods on which they turn that the line, inside, is cut 

 in pieces by friction. 



The two'curved, convex surfaces of the spool or 

 reel that carry the line should be \\ inches wide, 

 and the whole reel should be polished in the tumb- 

 ling barrel, and tinned or nickle plated. The two 

 cast iron rods, for a good sized family reel, to hold 

 two or three hundred feet of line, should be replaced 

 by polished rods of best tool steel | inch in diameter, 



* E. H. Jacobs MTg Co., Danielsonville, Ct., will answer all in- 

 qtiiries looking towards trade. — Ed. 



