6i4 



TARRYTOWN LETTERS. 



ing — absolutely weedless for such an occasion, with 

 the mellow loam looking as if it naturally fell in 

 tilth around each plant in her exquisite cultivation 

 — these gentlemen would take a business-like inter- 

 est in her tools for a few moments. Once an emi- 

 nent company, persuaded by her proofs of utility, 

 did attempt to make two or three hundred hoes, but 

 never really equipped themselves with fit machines, 

 dies, etc., in determination to have them done 

 cheaply as well as in the best possible manner. 



" There is no demand for as good garden-tools as 

 these, Mrs. Tarryer " — or, "you'd better use mal- 

 leable iron for this part" — or, " why isn't a com- 

 mon shank and ferule as good as that wrought and 

 polished socket ?" were the common remarks of 

 these manufacturing characters. They evidently 

 had little faith in the permanent garden purposes 

 of the people of this broad land, and they were 

 partly right. Lord Bacon said in his old time that 

 the English built better than they planted. So do 

 the Yankees. We say "We can buy garden-stuff 

 cheaper than we can raise it." Yes, and we might 

 as well say we can import grown people cheaper 



Mrs. Tarryer's Weeding Thimble 



than we can raise children, but a feeling is gaining 

 ground that these reasonings, in a private as well as 

 public point of view, fall to the ground of their own 

 rot. There is no eternal life in them. It was Judas 

 who sold cheaply. Only dear things are worth having. 



Last summer was a very weedy one. But Mrs. 

 Tarryer still believes in the essential humanity of 

 her garden-tools. She has invented a new one of 

 fine tempered steel. Parson Camperdown says it 

 beats all for carrying out the old doctrine of infant 

 damnation for weeds in its purity. I enclose a 

 picture of it. "With that in hand, weeds can be 

 elected to die young — they are happiest so" — is 

 another of his remarks. He says the old preach- 

 ers were not fools, but weeders, who believed, first 

 and last, that government must begin in the garden ; 

 that the men farmer Cromwell recommended to 

 John Hampden as fit to cope with the roistering 

 gentry who followed King Charles, were men who 

 were used literally to governing the land — that the 

 "Ironsides" was a regiment of weeders. 



We call the new implement "Mrs. Tarryer's 

 Weeding Thimble," because she used the first one 

 she had in a stooping posture, with her forefinger in 



it, as her father used a very thin old case-knife, bent 

 at the end. It can be made of any weight, for all 

 sorts of people ; stiff enough to haul out the rankest 

 weeds, grass and thinnings from thick-set blackberry 

 rows, or of delicate spring-steel, fit for the tiniest 

 weeds in seedling grass-plats, and with little knob- 

 handles from six inches to six feet long. 



"Why don't you get that patented?" many ask 

 Mrs. Tarryer. Well, she showed it to one patent 

 agent — the very tool in the photograph. He caught 

 on to the novelty at once, and said "That steel 

 spring must be of great value in relieving the nervous 

 shock from the jar of concussion with a billiard 

 ball." He cotcid get a patent on it for a billiard cue ! 

 Another agent asked, "Is it intended for pruning 

 trees ?" It is not likely that the employes of the 

 patent office are judges of weeding implements, 

 else the grass around the Capitol would not be over- 

 run with garlic. To get a patent an invention 

 must cause the observer to fall over backwards with 

 astonishment — no matter whether it is good for any- 

 thing or not. The patent office was designed to 

 assist, protect and reward useful inventions, and 

 though many of our commonest 

 ^ _ " ^" O implements sadly need remodel- 

 ling in the interest of all handi- 

 crafts, neither patent law — or 

 the rulings of courts which 

 have muddled the law — tend to 

 any such ends, but rather to leaving the public a 

 prey to the confidence-games of agents and the 

 blindness or worse of ignorant officials. Meanwhile, 

 as I said before, the curse of weediness and sterility 

 is upon us. 



Of " Mrs. Tarryer's Weeding Thimble," she has 

 had a dozen made with infinite patience, trouble 

 and cost, by more than as many different mechan- 

 ics — hoping to get one that is just right for a model. 

 They are all effective implements, but not one is fit 

 to send the editor of the Garden, and all would 

 be needed as guides or warnings for an acute 

 manufacturer. 



Among intelligent mechanics a feeling is growing 

 that a patent is of no use — even as an advertise- 

 ment — so much nonsense has been patented. Some 

 say the old maxim of " Live and Let Live," is com- 

 ing in force, and that when a manufacturer shows 

 that he really knows how to make anything right, 

 his fellows courteously let him do it. If this is not 

 too good to be true, the patent office may fall into a 

 state of innocuous desuetude, unless it goes back 

 to its first principle of understanding our industries 

 and helping and protecting them towards perfection. 



