324 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
January 20. 
i bed, and it'required all his companion’s corporal strength to 
1 restrain him from doing injury to both. Not one coherent 
word escaped his lips; and the only indication he had ot 
his being at any time sensible, was when he folded his 
1 hands, as if in prayer, and a slight movement of the lips 
strengthened the hope that he was so engaged; and thus 
his soul passed away to stand before the throne of Christ. 
“So ended the career of our poor favorite ! Carressed and 
beloved at home, he died in a foreign land, with no minis¬ 
terial attendance, nor in possession of the ordinary comforts 
of the poorest man in his native country. And for what was 
this sacrifice made? For the vain and.delusive hope of 
heaping up earthly treasures, “that moth and the rust 
corrupt, and that thieves break through and steal! " 
“Poor Jones was buried by his only friend at the least 
possible cost; but, nevertheless, the doctor’s and undertaker’s 
bills, and other incidental expences, left about T25 to be 
made up in the best way that might be: a sale of his few ^ 
effects produced a part of the sum, and his friend made up 
the deficiency. 
“How great the shock was to his parents I need not 
describe. To hear of his health and death in the same day 
was a blow that few could bear with calmness: and the 
Jones's were no exception to the generality. I may just add, 
that the friend’s letter was a very desponding one, weighed 
down as he was by the death of Jones. He had made up 
his mind to return with all possible expedition, for he 
stated, that although more money might be made often than 
in England, yet everything was so expensive, and sickness so 
prevalent, that no saving could be effected.” 
Dear readers! the history of Frederick Jones is a very 
striking, and a very aw.ful one. He was wishing to be rich. 
The love of money, and not the command of the Lord, sent 
him forth, from parents, home, and quiet business. When 
we go into places where there is no fear of God, no means 
of grace, and no word from the Lord to point out our way ; 
there, depend upon it, we take no blessing with us, and put 
ourselves in the way of such temptations and troubles as 
must end in bodily and spiritual harm. The Romans, in 
ages long gone by, had what they called an oracle, which 
they took no step without solemnly consulting. 7 Ve have an 
oracle; let us consult it in all our doings. Oar oracle is not 
one of flesh and blood, hidden in some mysterious place, 
like that of the poor benighted Romans : but it is the Word 
of the living God! What says it to those who are seeking 
their worldly good? “ Godliness with contentment is great 
gain.” “ And having food and raiment, let us be therewith 
content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and 
a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts that drown 
men in destruction and perdition. For the love ol money 
is the root of all evil; which, while some coveted after, 
they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves 
through with many sorrows.” “ Seek ye first the kingdom 
of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be 
added unto you.” Oh! that we would lay these things to 
heart! That we would pray more for our daily bread, and 
not go seeking it in the waste places of the earth! I 
have never yet heard of a man who feared God going to the 
gold-regions; he dares not. 
Let us reflect how dreadful it must be to lie on a sick bed 
in a strange and heathen land; to feel that time, health, 
blessings,, life itself, have all been wasted and misused! 
that the Great Account is at haud ! What a main chance 
this is to toil and struggle for! Depend upon it, readers, 
“ the kingdom of His righteousness ” is the only real and 
certain main chance. Let us dig in the Lord’s gold-fields. 
ALLOTMENT’ FARMING—FEBRUARY. 
After one of the most severe winters on record, more 
keen, indeed, than the notorious hard frost of 1814, which 
those of our cottage friends who possess a bleached crown 
will remember, we are at last placed on the threshold of a 
rising spring ; hard weather there still may he, but it is at 
least a consolation to remember that we have got rid of a 
dull, dark December, and such a January as will be long 
I remembered. 
But there are no new things in this world. Since time 
began, the history of the human race is altogether a chain 
of varied character, link after link produce shades of dif¬ 
ference, and yet, when the whole chain is viewed, cycles, or 
groups of events, or conditions, present themselves to the ^ 
mind as coming round again at intervals. Indeed, if it 
were not so, how could the great balance be restored? If 
we have a repetition of cold summers, how shall their 
chilling effects be counter-checked but by some possessing , 
an unusual degree of heat? If we have, like the starving 
and sloppy years of 1810-17, too uch wet, do we not 
generally find that nature, in a compensatory way, sends 
certain periods of drought, perhaps combined with much 
heat, and which just serve to restore the balance. 
Therefore, our cottage garden friends and those who 
deal with the allotment system, which one day will receive | 
a far broader development, take heart; although your 
Cabbageworts, Lettuces, Ac., have quailed beneath the 
stern dominion of the ice king of 1854, yet take courage I 
through the fact, that the sun will shine not a whit the less ; 
when spring arrives; and, with April showers combined, will 
a<rain give rise to the same lightness of heart and heel as ! 
came to pass in the days of our forefathers. 
Whilst writing this, I must remark that the past severe 
weather has been one of no small trial to the lowly. Every¬ 
thing on the rise but fires with the poor; an unusually 
hard"period as to weather; Potatoes only in the hands of 
the affluent or the grasping; even such root-crops as 
Swedes, Carrots, Parsnips, Beet, &c., partaking of the 
general tone of trade ; the whole, of course, biassed in the 
main by the price of Wheat; then, I say, this, with more, had 
I space for further observation, jvill prove, to all feeling 
minds, that much privation, if not suffering, has been en¬ 
dured. But how plain the endurance of these things proves 
that John Bull, although a notorious grumbler, is by no 
means a revolutionist. 
It shows the endurance of the masses, and points, in un¬ 
mistakable language, to that under current of feeling which 
evinces the secret faith they have in the solidity ot our free 
government. The character of the pending war, too, will 
set forth the character of our time-honoured institutions in 
a bolder light than ever; the desperate character of some 
of our semi-barbarous nations will surely teach our country¬ 
men a lesson they will not speedily forget. 
But to our allotment matters. If any of our readers have 
beeu what is termed frozen out, they have surely had. an 
excellent chance of attending to drainage affairs, manuring, 
hedge or boundary dressing, Ac., and of clearing and col¬ 
lecting the residue of everything that has once been alive, 
in order to increase the manure heap. There will be, 
doubtless, plenty of soot tliis spring, for much firing must 
of necessity have been used. 
I have always strenuously advocated carefulness over tliis 
valuable stimulant, and still think that the most profitable 
and economic way of using it is combined with good 
Peruvian guano, and the remains of very old wood stacks, 
old manure become a soil, Ac., and which our chemists 
have dignified by the title of humus. This may be pre¬ 
pared before hand, and kept out of the reach of others for 
use in drills or on beds. It must be remembered, however, 
that this is a precious material, and not by any means for 
“ digging-in ” as ordinary manure. Its chief use is as a 
promoter of rapid growth in young seed crops, making them 
to grow rapidly out of the reach of insect enemies, slugs, 
&c., and also to steal a march on the summer. 
Many crops may be obtained from ground not too much 
exhausted by the use of this alone; the Early Horn Carrol I 
have grown capitally, by the use of such a material, in beds 
of about four feet in width, such beds having been a high 
ridge all the winter, and broken down and well worked in 
the beginning of February; the compost applied about an 
inch or more in thickness, and “ trickled-in” with a fork to 
about four inches in depth. The seed then sown and 
covered with the ordinary soil an inch in thickness. Such 
beds, for early work, should be thrown six inches above the 
ordinary ground level, in order to promote a mellowness in 
the soil, as stagnation through a low level is one of the 
greatest enemies of early crops. 
The nicest attention must be paid, during this month, to 
a due preparation of the soil for spring sowings ; whether 
the ground has been ridged and worked in autumn or not, 
it must by no means be handled when wet. Neither must 
