THE LURE OF THE GARDEN 
guiding them past your traps and poisons, and in and 
out of the tin collars with which you have desperately 
sought to protect your best beloved seedlings. You 
may be up early and down late, but the garden, work¬ 
ing with a feverish frenzy in the service of its enemy, 
obsessed like a drug fiend with the passion for its own 
extermination, is more than apt to win in its suicidal 
intent, and to leave its beds and borders bare of some 
of its loveliest possessions. 
If, however, you do succeed in tracking down and 
slaying the last of those fat pirates, do not dream that 
you have conquered your garden’s predilections toward 
evil behavior. It has untold resources of wickedness, 
and once it has set foot upon the broad pathway of 
destruction, marches merrily along, undeterred by warn¬ 
ings and examples. 
One of the mischievous delights of a thoroughly cor¬ 
rupt garden is to fill all its roses with a horrid yellow 
and greenish beetle, so that, should you bend to smell 
or to pluck one of these queen flowers, crimson, yellow, 
or white, a mass of scrabbling, long-legged, and hard- 
shelled insects begin to agitate themselves, crawling 
out upon your nose or hands, while the half-blown 
petals tumble shamefully to earth, corroded and gnawed 
beyond recognition. 
Lacking these, there are myriads of infinitesimal but 
hateful creatures which a garden, smiling deceitfully 
from its multicolored faces, will diligently hang on twig 
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