practical papers—market gardening . 
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about you that will warrant you in going into it, or even if you 
are in a young and growing place, and can make a beginning, and 
build up your business as the place grows, and grow up with it; 
if you are willing to endure its cares and perplexities, and there 
will be many of them that I have not and cannot enumerate here, 
you may make a beginning; and if you are a lover of the true, 
and the pure, and the beautiful; if you love to watch the sprout¬ 
ing seed, the opening bud, the growing plant, as day by day, it 
develops into a thing of beauty, each one true to its kind, and, as 
the season advances, displaying more and more of that mechan¬ 
ical skill of which you may see so much, but of whose sweet 
working we know so little ; if you can love and admire that chem¬ 
ical process, and who can help admiring it? for, oh, how I have 
wished and longed to read the secret workings of that wonderful 
chemical combination in nature’s laboratory, that, though as silent 
as the falling dew, begins with the sprouting seed, and never ceases, 
day nor night, but works on, and on, with ceaseless, noiseless 
steps, until it has reproduced a harvest true to its own kind. 
And, as the season draws to a close, you will see and count up 
your own mistakes, and they will be many, even though you 
have worked ever so wisely and ever so well. But here, in this 
as yet impenetrable secret of nature, there will be no mistakes. 
The pea has not produced a potatoe, nor the potato an ear of 
corn, neither has the corn produced a beet nor a carrot. The to¬ 
mato seed has not turned to a cabbage, nor the cabbage to a radish. 
The beautiful, modest, little strawberry plant has not produced a 
raspberry nor a currant, but each and every one has been true to 
itself and to the Great Architect, who made the laws that govern 
one and all of them. Will you love to tend and watch and care 
for these things of beauty, and help them to do their best? If 
so, you may become a gardener; and I know of no business in 
which you can be more happy and contented. In a few years, 
you will be almost sure to be beyond the necessity of hard labor 
with your own hands, but will do better to superintend and direct 
the management of the garden and conduct the experiments which 
year by year you will find it necessary to make. And as old age 
draws on, you will find yourself with a modest competence, that 
will insure you against the many wants that make money a neces- 
