THE LADIES’ MAGAZINE OF GARDENING. 
71 
the most common operations of gardening.” “ Take my advice, however,” 
said the lady, u and instead of setting yourself down in London, in bad 
air and confined streets, take a house in the suburbs, where you will be 
near enough to reap all the advantages to be derived from consulting the 
best medical men, and, at the same time, may regain your health by 
exercise in your garden.” Mr. W. accordingly proceeded immediately to 
Bayswater, where he hired a small cottage surrounded by a tolerably large 
garden; and here, being ignorant of the superior kinds of gardening, he 
began by digging and manuring the soil, and planting cabbages! As the 
ground was very gravelly, and he thought the stones unsightly, he sifted 
a great part of it for sheer bodily exercise, till the perspiration used to 
trickle down his face in copious showers. In the course of a few weeks he 
began to find himself growing gradually better; he left off his doctors, and 
his family once more conceived hopes of a long and peaceful life being yet 
before him. 
At the end of ten months, a neat house with a good garden iri a 
better part of Bayswater was offered for sale, which he purchased in 
the year 1836, and where he has ever since resided, constantly occupying 
himself with gardening, of which he has now attained a sufficient know¬ 
ledge to be able to produce excellent crops of vegetables, particularly 
of carrots, their growth being, no doubt, much favoured by the sifting the 
soil had undergone during the first years of his tutelage ; for he continued 
the operation here as well as in his former garden. He now occupied 
himself principally with pruning and nailing his vines, fruit-trees, &c.; 
the violent digging and sifting being no longer necessary either for himself 
or his garden, as both are now in excellent order. As for himself, he 
enjoys better health than he ever did in his life, eating a breakfast like a 
farmer; occupying the hours not devoted to his garden in reading ; 
enjoying all his meals, and quietly retiring to repose at ten o’clock, from 
which he awakes refreshed, with no unpleasant symptoms of tongue or 
palate : and never fails on all occasions to acknowledge that, to gardening 
alone, under Divine Providence, he is indebted for this happy state of 
existence. 
Bayswater, 
February 1841. 
