TARRYTOWN LETTERS— IX. 



BY A. B. TARRVER. 



SOME FRUIT-WEATHER TALK FRUIT SOUPS DON'T KEEP OFF THE GRASS LADY SCHNIPTICKET AND THE 



OLD SHEEP-PASTURE GRASS AN EDUCATION IN GRASS. 



N reaching after rare fruits that are 

 not as good, and temperance drinks 

 that are not as wholesome as apples 

 and apple-juice might be, we have 

 forgotten how to grow and preserve 

 the King of Fruits in plenty all the 

 year through, as our fathers did." This was Mrs. 

 Tarryer's apologetic remark to several of her guests 

 as she loosened the halyards of a fine bunch of un- 

 bruised bananas than hung high in the warm hall, 

 and lowered away until she could select with her 

 own hands the fragrant and dead-ripe specimens 

 for lunch. 



That hot day, or the very next one, in June, she 

 served an iced fruit soup, of the color of red wine, 

 floating with sliced bananas and strawberries. 

 It is of no use to ask how that soup was made, 

 for she never has fruit soups twice alike, but just 

 makes them of what ripe fruits she can get, with 

 keen eyes and a scientific imagination for colors and 

 tastes. All of them are marveloush- delightful and 

 delicious in hot weather. If the day turns sud- 

 denly cool, by dinner-time, she will not allow her 

 ices to be frustrated : cleft pine logs blaze high 

 upon the andirons till the heat is quite tropical. 

 Even Parson Camperdown, who is likely to be the 

 chilliest of the party, with his feet under a little 

 table by the fire, gets enough of it, and finds the 

 iced fruit soup of the color of red wine a most 

 warming thing to begin dinner. 



Nobody disputed Mrs. Tarryer's proposition, and 

 the conversation did not turn upon apple orchards 

 at that time, though Mrs. Tarryer and every one 

 who thinks about it, knows there is more money in 

 strictly fine apple- culture (and more ignorance — 

 alas ! ) than in any other branch of pomology. 



* * * * -X- * -X- -x- 



Later in the evening, when Mrs. Camperdown sat 

 in the parson's old gig, preliminarj' to the home- 

 going, and his mare was allowed to refresh herself 

 with the lush grass of the smooth door-yard — 

 greatly to Lady Schnipticket's astonishment, be- 

 cause Mrs. Tarryer did not object to it — the ques- 

 tion of domestic grass was raised. Lady Schnip- 

 ticket got her money in the railwa\- line, and is not 



a verv frequent visitor at our house, though tlie talk 

 and fare here always seems to suit some dormant 

 old elements in her sophisticated composition. She 

 remonstrated with Parson Camperdown for allowing 

 his horse and carriage to trample and gnaw the 

 lawn so. 



"Won't it pull and destroy all the grass?" she 

 asked. 



The parson, seeing his good wife, who is a droll 

 story-teller, surrounded by some of the younger 

 members of the party, stopped to defend himself, 

 which he was well able to do from long familiarity 

 with Mrs. Tarryer's views upon the subject. So 

 Lady Schnipticket listened with open mouth to the 

 parson's elucidation of the idea that it made turf 

 robust and durable to trample on it occasionally. 

 It would take a whole number of the Garden to 

 report that conversation between the most polite of 

 gentlemen and the most obtuse of ladies, and we 

 old smokers only heard it from the end of the 

 broad veranda, where the shade of sipho was dark- 

 est. But finally the parson mustered up courage 

 enough to assert that if we would spend as much in 

 teaching the people to know grass as we spend in 

 signs to " Keep off the grass " (Lady Schnipticket's 

 place is covered with those staring village obsceni- 

 ties), it would be vastly better for grass every\\ here. 

 And he succeeded in reminding the railway lady of 

 the fine short turf of the old sheep-pasture of 

 her childhood, for she remembered how a stile 

 from the walled-in garden of her early New Eng- 

 land home used to let her go romping dow n among 

 shaded green slopes, past grey, mossy and vine-clad 

 ledges with her school-mates, and she grew quite 

 pensi^•e and even beautiful and girlish for a moment 

 in the light of the rising moon filtering through the 

 young leaves full upon her. Then the parson got 

 in his amusing story about the absurd wriggling of 

 lamb's tails while drawing their needful sustenance, 

 kneeling at maternal founts ; said tails being stiff 

 close to their bodies, but flaccid for the most part 

 at their ends — and how Brown, his best vestryman, 

 secured a new bell for the church by likening the 

 sound of the cracked old one to a "lamb's tail in 

 an old hat," which w as published in the local news- 



