550 



TARRYTOWN LETTERS. 



small malices of these gardeners make any difficulty 

 between you and me ! This grass is coming out all 

 right, and will be lovely in the end. You don't 

 know that either I or my boys and girls, without 

 seeming to do it, have had to keep the weeds out of 

 this grass ourselves. Parson Camperdown's man 

 and your McTavish — I believe he is at the bottom 

 of all the trouble — determined this grass should not 

 succeed, and I have determined it shall !" 



Lady Schnipticket opened her eyes, then, as 

 though she had just thought of somethmg and 

 insisted that Mrs. Tarryer should step into her car- 

 riage. There, the dowager was quite confidential. 

 " I told McTavish the other day," she went on, 

 " that he might as well trade w ith a Smith, a Brown 

 or a Jones, sometimes, as with the eternal " Mc's" 

 I am constantly drawing checks for. And do look 

 at this piece of his impudence ! It was mixed in 

 with a lot of papers he handed me :" 



" Mi dere Sandy yule haf to tek the sorel mare back 

 "she can't step with the gra nor with dandy and the ole 

 " woman ses she wont do at all 



"yours M'Tavish." 

 " I'll ' old woman ' him, you'll see ! He's been 

 raking all manner of grass-seed bills into my weedy 

 lawn — the stupid ! — these twenty years, the same 

 as Parson Camperdown has, without minding the 

 annual grasses that are nothing but weeds. Now, 

 my dear — that McTavish — ' old woman ' indeed ! — 

 shall manage my grass precisely as you say, or 

 pack r 



After relating this interview — not much less in 

 volume than a number of the Garden — Mrs. 

 Tarryer admitted that Lady Schnipticket said one 

 thing in her lecture that is worth repeating here : 

 "The experiment stations ought to go into this 

 kind of grass-work instead of leaving the people at 

 the mercy of their ignorant gardeners and the seed- 



trade, who of course don't know any better." 



Parson Camperdown's lawn is greener than an 

 emerald with the one pure grass, now, and McTavish 

 has every weedy spot on the Schnipticket grounds 

 under half-summer fallow, in readiness for " dotted 

 lawn ■' planting or pure seeding this fall or next 

 spring. The weedy sod is first coated with fine clay 

 loam and then carefully turned under, with a fertil- 

 izer, to receive a light dust of clay with a fertilizer 

 on top. He makes the most obsequious of bows to 

 Mrs. Tarryer, and the last boy-baby was baptized 

 " Tarryer-McTavish," in genuine Scotch thrift. 

 Lady Schnipticket says this sod-business shall be 

 worked into our grass-science if she has to hire a 

 lot of botanists and pay their board at Saratoga 

 next summer to get it done ! 



[note by MR. TARRYER.] 



One of the publishers telegraphs to know if the 

 allusions to "the Scotchman " cannot be shaded, in 

 fear of giving offence to a worthy nationality ? 

 Mrs. Tarryer declines to shade anything except her 

 Poa trii'ialis, late peas and pansies. She prefers 

 to let the sun in. She says "tell him the Tarryers 

 were Welsh, that I was born three parts Scotch, 

 and that this firm claims the right to criticise certain 

 varieties of Scotchmen or any other race that works 

 mischief in the garden. It's all in the family." 

 Mrs. Tarryer adores the chivalrous and self-sacri- 

 ficing Scottish character. She considers the way 

 M'Alpine places his new system of " How to Know 

 Grass by its Leaves," as a safe step for botanists to 

 get to the ground, and the most heroic act since 

 Raleigh flung his cloak in the mud for Queen Bess 

 to travel on. " Now," she says, "if some Scots- 

 man will hurry up the science of ' How to Know 

 Grass by its Roots, we may all be happy in our 

 grass-gardens.' " 



