I suppose the time has come when I am expected to say something about fertilizers: all agriculturists do. When you plant, you think you cannot fertilize too much: when you get the bills for the manure, you think you cannot fertilize too little. Of course you do not expect to get the value of the manure back in fruits and vegetables; but something is due to science,—to chemistry in particular. You must have a knowledge of soils, must have your soil analyzed, and then go into a course of experiments to find what it needs. It needs analyzing,—that, I am clear about: everything needs that. You had better have the soil analyzed before you buy: if there is "pusley" in it, let it alone. See if it is a soil that requires much hoeing, and how fine it will get if there is no rain for two months. But when you come to fertilizing, if I understand the agricultural authorities, you open a pit that will ultimately swallow you up, —farm and all. It is the great subject of modern times, how to fertilize without ruinous expense; how, in short, not to starve the earth to death while we get our living out of it. Practically, the business is hardly to the taste of a person of a poetic turn of mind. The details of fertilizing are not agreeable. Michael Angelo, who tried every art, and nearly every trade, never gave his mind to fertilizing. It is much pleasanter and easier to fertilize with a pen, as the agricultural writers do, than with a fork. And this leads me to say, that, in carrying on a garden yourself, you must have a "consulting" gardener; that is, a man to do the heavy and unpleasant work. To such a man, I say, in language used by Demosthenes to the Athenians, and which is my advice to all gardeners, "Fertilize, fertilize, fertilize!"



THIRTEENTH WEEK

I find that gardening has unsurpassed advantages for the study of natural history; and some scientific facts have come under my own observation, which cannot fail to interest naturalists and un-naturalists in about the same degree. Much, for instance, has been written about the toad, an animal without which no garden would be complete. But little account has been made of his value: the beauty of his eye alone has been dwelt on; and little has been said of his mouth, and its important function as a fly and bug trap. His habits, and even his origin, have been misunderstood. Why, as an illustration, are toads so plenty after a thunder-shower? All my life long, no one has been able to answer me that question. Why, after a heavy shower, and in the midst of it, do such multitudes of toads, especially little ones, hop about on the gravel-walks? For many years, I believed that they rained down; and I suppose many people think so still. They are so small, and they come in such numbers only in the shower, that the supposition is not a violent one. "Thick as toads after a shower," is one of our best proverbs. I asked an explanation 'of this of a thoughtful woman,—indeed, a leader in the great movement to have all the toads hop in any direction, without any distinction of sex or religion. Her reply was, that the toads come out during the shower to get water. This, however, is not the fact. I have discovered that they come out not to get water. I deluged a dry flower-bed, the other night, with pailful after pailful of water. Instantly the toads came out of their holes in the dirt, by tens and twenties and fifties, to escape death by drowning. The big ones fled away in a ridiculous streak of hopping; and the little ones sprang about in the wildest confusion. The toad is just like any other land animal: when his house is full of water, he quits it. These facts, with the drawings of the water and the toads, are at the service of the distinguished scientists of Albany in New York, who were so much impressed by the Cardiff Giant.

The domestic cow is another animal whose ways I have a chance to study, and also to obliterate in the garden. One of my neighbors has a cow, but no land; and he seems desirous to pasture her on the surface of the land of other people: a very reasonable desire. The man proposed that he should be allowed to cut the grass from my grounds for his cow. I knew the cow, having often had her in my garden; knew her gait and the size of her feet, which struck me as a little large for the size of the body. Having no cow myself, but acquaintance with my neighbor's, I told him that I thought it would be fair for him to have the grass. He was, therefore, to keep the grass nicely cut, and to keep his cow at home. I waited some time after the grass needed cutting; and, as my neighbor did not appear, I hired it cut. No sooner was it done than he promptly appeared, and raked up most of it, and carried it away. He had evidently been waiting that opportunity. When the grass grew again, the neighbor did not appear with his scythe; but one morning I found the cow tethered on the sward, hitched near the clothes-horse, a short distance from the house. This seemed to be the man's idea of the best way to cut the grass. I disliked to have the cow there, because I knew her inclination to pull up the stake, and transfer her field of mowing to the garden, but especially because of her voice. She has the most melancholy "moo" I ever heard. It is like the wail of one uninfallible, excommunicated, and lost. It is a most distressing perpetual reminder of the brevity of life and the shortness of feed. It is unpleasant to the family. We sometimes hear it in the middle of the night, breaking the silence like a suggestion of coming calamity. It is as bad as the howling of a dog at a funeral.

I told the man about it; but he seemed to think that he was not responsible for the cow's voice. I then told him to take her away; and he did, at intervals, shifting her to different parts of the grounds in my absence, so that the desolate voice would startle us from unexpected quarters. If I were to unhitch the cow, and turn her loose, I knew where she would go. If I were to lead her away, the question was, Where? for I did not fancy leading a cow about till I could find somebody who was willing to pasture her. To this dilemma had my excellent neighbor reduced me. But I found him, one Sunday morning,—a day when it would not do to get angry, tying his cow at the foot of the hill; the beast all the time going on in that abominable voice. I told the man that I could not have the cow in the grounds. He said, "All right, boss;" but he did not go away. I asked him to clear out. The man, who is a French sympathizer from the Republic of Ireland, kept his temper perfectly. He said he wasn't doing anything, just feeding his cow a bit: he wouldn't make me the least trouble in the world. I reminded him that he had been told again and again not to come here; that he might have all the grass, but he should not bring his cow upon the premises. The imperturbable man assented to everything that I said, and kept on feeding his cow. Before I got him to go to fresh scenes and pastures new, the Sabbath was almost broken; but it was saved by one thing: it is difficult to be emphatic when no one is emphatic on the other side. The man and his cow have taught me a great lesson, which I shall recall when I keep a cow. I can recommend this cow, if anybody wants one, as a steady boarder, whose keeping will cost the owner little; but, if her milk is at all like her voice, those who drink it are on the straight road to lunacy.

I think I have said that we have a game-preserve. We keep quails, or try to, in the thickly wooded, bushed, and brushed ravine. This bird is a great favorite with us, dead or alive, on account of its tasteful plumage, its tender flesh, its domestic virtues, and its pleasant piping. Besides, although I appreciate toads and cows, and all that sort of thing, I like to have a game-preserve more in the English style. And we did. For in July, while the game-law was on, and the young quails were coming on, we were awakened one morning by firing, —musketry-firing, close at hand. My first thought was, that war was declared; but, as I should never pay much attention to war declared at that time in the morning, I went to sleep again. But the occurrence was repeated,—and not only early in the morning, but at night. There was calling of dogs, breaking down of brush, and firing of guns. It is hardly pleasant to have guns fired in the direction of the house, at your own quails. The hunters could be sometimes seen, but never caught. Their best time was about sunrise; but, before one could dress and get to the front, they would retire.

One morning, about four o'clock, I heard the battle renewed. I sprang up, but not in arms, and went to a window. Polly (like another 'blessed damozel') flew to another window,—

"The blessed damozel leaned out From the gold bar of heaven,"

and reconnoitered from behind the blinds.

"The wonder was not yet quite gone From that still look of hers,"

when an armed man and a legged dog appeared in the opening. I was vigilantly watching him.

. . . . "And now She spoke through the still weather."

"Are you afraid to speak to him?" asked Polly.

Not exactly,

. . . ."she spoke as when The stars sang in their spheres.

"Stung by this inquiry, I leaned out of the window till

"The bar I leaned on (was) warm,"

and cried,—

"Halloo, there! What are you doing?"

"Look out he don't shoot you," called out Polly from the other window, suddenly going on another tack.

I explained that a sportsman would not be likely to shoot a gentleman in his own house, with bird-shot, so long as quails were to be had.

"You have no business here: what are you after?" I repeated.

"Looking for a lost hen," said the man as he strode away.

The reply was so satisfactory and conclusive that I shut the blinds and went to bed.

But one evening I overhauled one of the poachers. Hearing his dog in the thicket, I rushed through the brush, and came in sight of the hunter as he was retreating down the road. He came to a halt; and we had some conversation in a high key. Of course I threatened to prosecute him. I believe that is the thing to do in such cases; but how I was to do it, when I did not know his name or ancestry, and couldn't see his face, never occurred to me. (I remember, now, that a farmer once proposed to prosecute me when I was fishing in a trout-brook on his farm, and asked my name for that purpose.) He said he should smile to see me prosecute him.

"You can't do it: there ain't no notice up about trespassing."

This view of the common law impressed me; and I said,

"But these are private grounds."

"Private h—-!" was all his response.

You can't argue much with a man who has a gun in his hands, when you have none. Besides, it might be a needle-gun, for aught I knew. I gave it up, and we separated.

There is this disadvantage about having a game preserve attached to your garden: it makes life too lively.



FOURTEENTH WEEK

In these golden latter August days, Nature has come to a serene equilibrium. Having flowered and fruited, she is enjoying herself. I can see how things are going: it is a down-hill business after this; but, for the time being, it is like swinging in a hammock, —such a delicious air, such a graceful repose! I take off my hat as I stroll into the garden and look about; and it does seem as if Nature had sounded a truce. I did n't ask for it. I went out with a hoe; but the serene sweetness disarms me. Thrice is he armed who has a long-handled hoe, with a double blade. Yet to-day I am almost ashamed to appear in such a belligerent fashion, with this terrible mitrailleuse of gardening.

The tomatoes are getting tired of ripening, and are beginning to go into a worthless condition,—green. The cucumbers cumber the ground,—great yellow, over-ripe objects, no more to be compared to the crisp beauty of their youth than is the fat swine of the sty to the clean little pig. The nutmeg-melons, having covered themselves with delicate lace-work, are now ready to leave the vine. I know they are ripe if they come easily off the stem.

Moral Observations.—You can tell when people are ripe by their willingness to let go. Richness and ripeness are not exactly the same. The rich are apt to hang to the stem with tenacity. I have nothing against the rich. If I were not virtuous, I should like to be rich. But we cannot have everything, as the man said when he was down with small-pox and cholera, and the yellow fever came into the neighborhood.

Now, the grapes, soaked in this liquid gold, called air, begin to turn, mindful of the injunction, "to turn or burn." The clusters under the leaves are getting quite purple, but look better than they taste. I think there is no danger but they will be gathered as soon as they are ripe. One of the blessings of having an open garden is, that I do not have to watch my fruit: a dozen youngsters do that, and let it waste no time after it matures. I wish it were possible to grow a variety of grape like the explosive bullets, that should explode in the stomach: the vine would make such a nice border for the garden,—a masked battery of grape. The pears, too, are getting russet and heavy; and here and there amid the shining leaves one gleams as ruddy as the cheek of the Nutbrown Maid. The Flemish Beauties come off readily from the stem, if I take them in my hand: they say all kinds of beauty come off by handling.

The garden is peace as much as if it were an empire. Even the man's cow lies down under the tree where the man has tied her, with such an air of contentment, that I have small desire to disturb her. She is chewing my cud as if it were hers. Well, eat on and chew on, melancholy brute. I have not the heart to tell the man to take you away: and it would do no good if I had; he wouldn't do it. The man has not a taking way. Munch on, ruminant creature.

The frost will soon come; the grass will be brown. I will be charitable while this blessed lull continues: for our benevolences must soon be turned to other and more distant objects,—the amelioration of the condition of the Jews, the education of theological young men in the West, and the like.

I do not know that these appearances are deceitful; but I sufficiently know that this is a wicked world, to be glad that I have taken it on shares. In fact, I could not pick the pears alone, not to speak of eating them. When I climb the trees, and throw down the dusky fruit, Polly catches it in her apron; nearly always, however, letting go when it drops, the fall is so sudden. The sun gets in her face; and, every time a pear comes down it is a surprise, like having a tooth out, she says.

"If I could n't hold an apron better than that!"

But the sentence is not finished: it is useless to finish that sort of a sentence in this delicious weather. Besides, conversation is dangerous. As, for instance, towards evening I am preparing a bed for a sowing of turnips,—not that I like turnips in the least; but this is the season to sow them. Polly comes out, and extemporizes her usual seat to "consult me" about matters while I work. I well know that something is coming.

"This is a rotation of crops, is n't it?"

"Yes: I have rotated the gone-to-seed lettuce off, and expect to rotate the turnips in; it is a political fashion."

"Is n't it a shame that the tomatoes are all getting ripe at once? What a lot of squashes! I wish we had an oyster-bed. Do you want me to help you any more than I am helping?"

"No, I thank you." (I wonder what all this is about?)

"Don't you think we could sell some strawberries next year?"

"By all means, sell anything. We shall no doubt get rich out of this acre."

"Don't be foolish."

And now!

"Don't you think it would be nice to have a?"....

And Polly unfolds a small scheme of benevolence, which is not quite enough to break me, and is really to be executed in an economical manner. "Would n't that be nice?"

"Oh, yes! And where is the money to come from?"

"I thought we had agreed to sell the strawberries."

"Certainly. But I think we would make more money if we sold the plants now."

"Well," said Polly, concluding the whole matter, "I am going to do it." And, having thus "consulted" me, Polly goes away; and I put in the turnip-seeds quite thick, determined to raise enough to sell. But not even this mercenary thought can ruffle my mind as I rake off the loamy bed. I notice, however, that the spring smell has gone out of the dirt. That went into the first crop.

In this peaceful unison with yielding nature, I was a little taken aback to find that a new enemy had turned up. The celery had just rubbed through the fiery scorching of the drought, and stood a faint chance to grow; when I noticed on the green leaves a big green-and-black worm, called, I believe, the celery-worm: but I don't know who called him; I am sure I did not. It was almost ludicrous that he should turn up here, just at the end of the season, when I supposed that my war with the living animals was over. Yet he was, no doubt, predestinated; for he went to work as cheerfully as if he had arrived in June, when everything was fresh and vigorous. It beats me—Nature does. I doubt not, that, if I were to leave my garden now for a week, it would n't know me on my return. The patch I scratched over for the turnips, and left as clean as earth, is already full of ambitious "pusley," which grows with all the confidence of youth and the skill of old age. It beats the serpent as an emblem of immortality. While all the others of us in the garden rest and sit in comfort a moment, upon the summit of the summer, it is as rampant and vicious as ever. It accepts no armistice.



FIFTEENTH WEEK

It is said that absence conquers all things, love included; but it has a contrary effect on a garden. I was absent for two or three weeks. I left my garden a paradise, as paradises go in this protoplastic world; and when I returned, the trail of the serpent was over it all, so to speak. (This is in addition to the actual snakes in it, which are large enough to strangle children of average size.) I asked Polly if she had seen to the garden while I was away, and she said she had. I found that all the melons had been seen to, and the early grapes and pears. The green worm had also seen to about half the celery; and a large flock of apparently perfectly domesticated chickens were roaming over the ground, gossiping in the hot September sun, and picking up any odd trifle that might be left. On the whole, the garden could not have been better seen to; though it would take a sharp eye to see the potato-vines amid the rampant grass and weeds.

The new strawberry-plants, for one thing, had taken advantage of my absence. Every one of them had sent out as many scarlet runners as an Indian tribe has. Some of them had blossomed; and a few had gone so far as to bear ripe berries,—long, pear-shaped fruit, hanging like the ear-pendants of an East Indian bride. I could not but admire the persistence of these zealous plants, which seemed determined to propagate themselves both by seeds and roots, and make sure of immortality in some way. Even the Colfax variety was as ambitious as the others. After having seen the declining letter of Mr. Colfax, I did not suppose that this vine would run any more, and intended to root it out. But one can never say what these politicians mean; and I shall let this variety grow until after the next election, at least; although I hear that the fruit is small, and rather sour. If there is any variety of strawberries that really declines to run, and devotes itself to a private life of fruit-bearing, I should like to get it. I may mention here, since we are on politics, that the Doolittle raspberries had sprawled all over the strawberry-bed's: so true is it that politics makes strange bedfellows.

But another enemy had come into the strawberries, which, after all that has been said in these papers, I am almost ashamed to mention. But does the preacher in the pulpit, Sunday after Sunday, year after year, shrink from speaking of sin? I refer, of course, to the greatest enemy of mankind, "p-sl-y." The ground was carpeted with it. I should think that this was the tenth crop of the season; and it was as good as the first. I see no reason why our northern soil is not as prolific as that of the tropics, and will not produce as many crops in the year. The mistake we make is in trying to force things that are not natural to it. I have no doubt that, if we turn our attention to "pusley," we can beat the world.

I had no idea, until recently, how generally this simple and thrifty plant is feared and hated. Far beyond what I had regarded as the bounds of civilization, it is held as one of the mysteries of a fallen world; accompanying the home missionary on his wanderings, and preceding the footsteps of the Tract Society. I was not long ago in the Adirondacks. We had built a camp for the night, in the heart of the woods, high up on John's Brook and near the foot of Mount Marcy: I can see the lovely spot now. It was on the bank of the crystal, rocky stream, at the foot of high and slender falls, which poured into a broad amber basin. Out of this basin we had just taken trout enough for our supper, which had been killed, and roasted over the fire on sharp sticks, and eaten before they had an opportunity to feel the chill of this deceitful world. We were lying under the hut of spruce-bark, on fragrant hemlock-boughs, talking, after supper. In front of us was a huge fire of birchlogs; and over it we could see the top of the falls glistening in the moonlight; and the roar of the falls, and the brawling of the stream near us, filled all the ancient woods. It was a scene upon which one would think no thought of sin could enter. We were talking with old Phelps, the guide. Old Phelps is at once guide, philosopher, and friend. He knows the woods and streams and mountains, and their savage inhabitants, as well as we know all our rich relations and what they are doing; and in lonely bear-hunts and sable-trappings he has thought out and solved most of the problems of life. As he stands in his wood-gear, he is as grizzly as an old cedar-tree; and he speaks in a high falsetto voice, which would be invaluable to a boatswain in a storm at sea.

We had been talking of all subjects about which rational men are interested,—bears, panthers, trapping, the habits of trout, the tariff, the internal revenue (to wit the injustice of laying such a tax on tobacco, and none on dogs:—"There ain't no dog in the United States," says the guide, at the top of his voice, "that earns his living"), the Adventists, the Gorner Grat, Horace Greeley, religion, the propagation of seeds in the wilderness (as, for instance, where were the seeds lying for ages that spring up into certain plants and flowers as soon as a spot is cleared anywhere in the most remote forest; and why does a growth of oak-trees always come up after a growth of pine has been removed?)—in short, we had pretty nearly reached a solution of many mysteries, when Phelps suddenly exclaimed with uncommon energy,—

"Wall, there's one thing that beats me!"

"What's that?" we asked with undisguised curiosity.

"That's 'pusley'!" he replied, in the tone of a man who has come to one door in life which is hopelessly shut, and from which he retires in despair.

"Where it comes from I don't know, nor what to do with it. It's in my garden; and I can't get rid of it. It beats me."

About "pusley" the guide had no theory and no hope. A feeling of awe came over me, as we lay there at midnight, hushed by the sound of the stream and the rising wind in the spruce-tops. Then man can go nowhere that "pusley" will not attend him. Though he camp on the Upper Au Sable, or penetrate the forest where rolls the Allegash, and hear no sound save his own allegations, he will not escape it. It has entered the happy valley of Keene, although there is yet no church there, and only a feeble school part of the year. Sin travels faster than they that ride in chariots. I take my hoe, and begin; but I feel that I am warring against something whose roots take hold on H.

By the time a man gets to be eighty, he learns that he is compassed by limitations, and that there has been a natural boundary set to his individual powers. As he goes on in life, he begins to doubt his ability to destroy all evil and to reform all abuses, and to suspect that there will be much left to do after he has done. I stepped into my garden in the spring, not doubting that I should be easily master of the weeds. I have simply learned that an institution which is at least six thousand years old, and I believe six millions, is not to be put down in one season.

I have been digging my potatoes, if anybody cares to know it. I planted them in what are called "Early Rose,"—the rows a little less than three feet apart; but the vines came to an early close in the drought. Digging potatoes is a pleasant, soothing occupation, but not poetical. It is good for the mind, unless they are too small (as many of mine are), when it begets a want of gratitude to the bountiful earth. What small potatoes we all are, compared with what we might be! We don't plow deep enough, any of us, for one thing. I shall put in the plow next year, and give the tubers room enough. I think they felt the lack of it this year: many of them seemed ashamed to come out so small. There is great pleasure in turning out the brown-jacketed fellows into the sunshine of a royal September day, and seeing them glisten as they lie thickly strewn on the warm soil. Life has few such moments. But then they must be picked up. The picking-up, in this world, is always the unpleasant part of it.



SIXTEENTH WEEK

I do not hold myself bound to answer the question, Does gardening pay? It is so difficult to define what is meant by paying. There is a popular notion that, unless a thing pays, you had better let it alone; and I may say that there is a public opinion that will not let a man or woman continue in the indulgence of a fancy that does not pay. And public opinion is stronger than the legislature, and nearly as strong as the ten commandments: I therefore yield to popular clamor when I discuss the profit of my garden.

As I look at it, you might as well ask, Does a sunset pay? I know that a sunset is commonly looked on as a cheap entertainment; but it is really one of the most expensive. It is true that we can all have front seats, and we do not exactly need to dress for it as we do for the opera; but the conditions under which it is to be enjoyed are rather dear. Among them I should name a good suit of clothes, including some trifling ornament,—not including back hair for one sex, or the parting of it in the middle for the other. I should add also a good dinner, well cooked and digestible; and the cost of a fair education, extended, perhaps, through generations in which sensibility and love of beauty grew. What I mean is, that if a man is hungry and naked, and half a savage, or with the love of beauty undeveloped in him, a sunset is thrown away on him: so that it appears that the conditions of the enjoyment of a sunset are as costly as anything in our civilization.

Of course there is no such thing as absolute value in this world. You can only estimate what a thing is worth to you. Does gardening in a city pay? You might as well ask if it pays to keep hens, or a trotting-horse, or to wear a gold ring, or to keep your lawn cut, or your hair cut. It is as you like it. In a certain sense, it is a sort of profanation to consider if my garden pays, or to set a money-value upon my delight in it. I fear that you could not put it in money. Job had the right idea in his mind when he asked, "Is there any taste in the white of an egg?" Suppose there is not! What! shall I set a price upon the tender asparagus or the crisp lettuce, which made the sweet spring a reality? Shall I turn into merchandise the red strawberry, the pale green pea, the high-flavored raspberry, the sanguinary beet, that love-plant the tomato, and the corn which did not waste its sweetness on the desert air, but, after flowing in a sweet rill through all our summer life, mingled at last with the engaging bean in a pool of succotash? Shall I compute in figures what daily freshness and health and delight the garden yields, let alone the large crop of anticipation I gathered as soon as the first seeds got above ground? I appeal to any gardening man of sound mind, if that which pays him best in gardening is not that which he cannot show in his trial-balance. Yet I yield to public opinion, when I proceed to make such a balance; and I do it with the utmost confidence in figures.

I select as a representative vegetable, in order to estimate the cost of gardening, the potato. In my statement, I shall not include the interest on the value of the land. I throw in the land, because it would otherwise have stood idle: the thing generally raised on city land is taxes. I therefore make the following statement of the cost and income of my potato-crop, a part of it estimated in connection with other garden labor. I have tried to make it so as to satisfy the income-tax collector:—

Plowing.......................................$0.50 Seed..........................................$1.50 Manure........................................ 8.00 Assistance in planting and digging, 3 days.... 6.75 Labor of self in planting, hoeing, digging, picking up, 5 days at 17 cents........... 0.85 Total Cost................$17.60

Two thousand five hundred mealy potatoes, at 2 cents..............................$50.00 Small potatoes given to neighbor's pig....... .50

Total return..............$50.50

Balance, profit in cellar......$32.90

Some of these items need explanation. I have charged nothing for my own time waiting for the potatoes to grow. My time in hoeing, fighting weeds, etc., is put in at five days: it may have been a little more. Nor have I put in anything for cooling drinks while hoeing. I leave this out from principle, because I always recommend water to others. I had some difficulty in fixing the rate of my own wages. It was the first time I had an opportunity of paying what I thought labor was worth; and I determined to make a good thing of it for once. I figured it right down to European prices,—seventeen cents a day for unskilled labor. Of course, I boarded myself. I ought to say that I fixed the wages after the work was done, or I might have been tempted to do as some masons did who worked for me at four dollars a day. They lay in the shade and slept the sleep of honest toil full half the time, at least all the time I was away. I have reason to believe that when the wages of mechanics are raised to eight and ten dollars a day, the workmen will not come at all: they will merely send their cards.

I do not see any possible fault in the above figures. I ought to say that I deferred putting a value on the potatoes until I had footed up the debit column. This is always the safest way to do. I had twenty-five bushels. I roughly estimated that there are one hundred good ones to the bushel. Making my own market price, I asked two cents apiece for them. This I should have considered dirt cheap last June, when I was going down the rows with the hoe. If any one thinks that two cents each is high, let him try to raise them.

Nature is "awful smart." I intend to be complimentary in saying so. She shows it in little things. I have mentioned my attempt to put in a few modest turnips, near the close of the season. I sowed the seeds, by the way, in the most liberal manner. Into three or four short rows I presume I put enough to sow an acre; and they all came up,—came up as thick as grass, as crowded and useless as babies in a Chinese village. Of course, they had to be thinned out; that is, pretty much all pulled up; and it took me a long time; for it takes a conscientious man some time to decide which are the best and healthiest plants to spare. After all, I spared too many. That is the great danger everywhere in this world (it may not be in the next): things are too thick; we lose all in grasping for too much. The Scotch say, that no man ought to thin out his own turnips, because he will not sacrifice enough to leave room for the remainder to grow: he should get his neighbor, who does not care for the plants, to do it. But this is mere talk, and aside from the point: if there is anything I desire to avoid in these agricultural papers, it is digression. I did think that putting in these turnips so late in the season, when general activity has ceased, and in a remote part of the garden, they would pass unnoticed. But Nature never even winks, as I can see. The tender blades were scarcely out of the ground when she sent a small black fly, which seemed to have been born and held in reserve for this purpose,—to cut the leaves. They speedily made lace-work of the whole bed. Thus everything appears to have its special enemy,—except, perhaps, p——y: nothing ever troubles that.

Did the Concord Grape ever come to more luscious perfection than this year? or yield so abundantly? The golden sunshine has passed into them, and distended their purple skins almost to bursting. Such heavy clusters! such bloom! such sweetness! such meat and drink in their round globes! What a fine fellow Bacchus would have been, if he had only signed the pledge when he was a young man! I have taken off clusters that were as compact and almost as large as the Black Hamburgs. It is slow work picking them. I do not see how the gatherers for the vintage ever get off enough. It takes so long to disentangle the bunches from the leaves and the interlacing vines and the supporting tendrils; and then I like to hold up each bunch and look at it in the sunlight, and get the fragrance and the bloom of it, and show it to Polly, who is making herself useful, as taster and companion, at the foot of the ladder, before dropping it into the basket. But we have other company. The robin, the most knowing and greedy bird out of paradise (I trust he will always be kept out), has discovered that the grape-crop is uncommonly good, and has come back, with his whole tribe and family, larger than it was in pea-time. He knows the ripest bunches as well as anybody, and tries them all. If he would take a whole bunch here and there, say half the number, and be off with it, I should not so much care. But he will not. He pecks away at all the bunches, and spoils as many as he can. It is time he went south.

There is no prettier sight, to my eye, than a gardener on a ladder in his grape-arbor, in these golden days, selecting the heaviest clusters of grapes, and handing them down to one and another of a group of neighbors and friends, who stand under the shade of the leaves, flecked with the sunlight, and cry, "How sweet!" "What nice ones!" and the like,—remarks encouraging to the man on the ladder. It is great pleasure to see people eat grapes.

Moral Truth.—I have no doubt that grapes taste best in other people's mouths. It is an old notion that it is easier to be generous than to be stingy. I am convinced that the majority of people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the opportunity.

Philosophical Observation.—Nothing shows one who his friends are like prosperity and ripe fruit. I had a good friend in the country, whom I almost never visited except in cherry-time. By your fruits you shall know them.



SEVENTEENTH WEEK

I like to go into the garden these warm latter days, and muse. To muse is to sit in the sun, and not think of anything. I am not sure but goodness comes out of people who bask in the sun, as it does out of a sweet apple roasted before the fire. The late September and October sun of this latitude is something like the sun of extreme Lower Italy: you can stand a good deal of it, and apparently soak a winter supply into the system. If one only could take in his winter fuel in this way! The next great discovery will, very likely, be the conservation of sunlight. In the correlation of forces, I look to see the day when the superfluous sunshine will be utilized; as, for instance, that which has burned up my celery this year will be converted into a force to work the garden.

This sitting in the sun amid the evidences of a ripe year is the easiest part of gardening I have experienced. But what a combat has gone on here! What vegetable passions have run the whole gamut of ambition, selfishness, greed of place, fruition, satiety, and now rest here in the truce of exhaustion! What a battle-field, if one may look upon it so! The corn has lost its ammunition, and stacked arms in a slovenly, militia sort of style. The ground vines are torn, trampled, and withered; and the ungathered cucumbers, worthless melons, and golden squashes lie about like the spent bombs and exploded shells of a battle-field. So the cannon-balls lay on the sandy plain before Fort Fisher after the capture. So the great grassy meadow at Munich, any morning during the October Fest, is strewn with empty beermugs. History constantly repeats itself. There is a large crop of moral reflections in my garden, which anybody is at liberty to gather who passes this way.

I have tried to get in anything that offered temptation to sin. There would be no thieves if there was nothing to steal; and I suppose, in the thieves' catechism, the provider is as bad as the thief; and, probably, I am to blame for leaving out a few winter pears, which some predatory boy carried off on Sunday. At first I was angry, and said I should like to have caught the urchin in the act; but, on second thought, I was glad I did not. The interview could not have been pleasant: I shouldn't have known what to do with him. The chances are, that he would have escaped away with his pockets full, and jibed at me from a safe distance. And, if I had got my hands on him, I should have been still more embarrassed. If I had flogged him, he would have got over it a good deal sooner than I should. That sort of boy does not mind castigation any more than he does tearing his trousers in the briers. If I had treated him with kindness, and conciliated him with grapes, showing him the enormity of his offense, I suppose he would have come the next night, and taken the remainder of the grapes. The truth is, that the public morality is lax on the subject of fruit. If anybody puts arsenic or gunpowder into his watermelons, he is universally denounced as a stingy old murderer by the community. A great many people regard growing fruit as lawful prey, who would not think of breaking into your cellar to take it. I found a man once in my raspberry-bushes, early in the season, when we were waiting for a dishful to ripen. Upon inquiring what he was about, he said he was only eating some; and the operation seemed to be so natural and simple, that I disliked to disturb him. And I am not very sure that one has a right to the whole of an abundant crop of fruit until he has gathered it. At least, in a city garden, one might as well conform his theory to the practice of the community.

As for children (and it sometimes looks as if the chief products of my garden were small boys and hens), it is admitted that they are barbarians. There is no exception among them to this condition of barbarism. This is not to say that they are not attractive; for they have the virtues as well as the vices of a primitive people. It is held by some naturalists that the child is only a zoophyte, with a stomach, and feelers radiating from it in search of something to fill it. It is true that a child is always hungry all over: but he is also curious all over; and his curiosity is excited about as early as his hunger. He immediately begins to put out his moral feelers into the unknown and the infinite to discover what sort of an existence this is into which he has come. His imagination is quite as hungry as his stomach. And again and again it is stronger than his other appetites. You can easily engage his imagination in a story which will make him forget his dinner. He is credulous and superstitious, and open to all wonder. In this, he is exactly like the savage races. Both gorge themselves on the marvelous; and all the unknown is marvelous to them. I know the general impression is that children must be governed through their stomachs. I think they can be controlled quite as well through their curiosity; that being the more craving and imperious of the two. I have seen children follow about a person who told them stories, and interested them with his charming talk, as greedily as if his pockets had been full of bon-bons.

Perhaps this fact has no practical relation to gardening; but it occurs to me that, if I should paper the outside of my high board fence with the leaves of "The Arabian Nights," it would afford me a good deal of protection,—more, in fact, than spikes in the top, which tear trousers and encourage profanity, but do not save much fruit. A spiked fence is a challenge to any boy of spirit. But if the fence were papered with fairy-tales, would he not stop to read them until it was too late for him to climb into the garden? I don't know. Human nature is vicious. The boy might regard the picture of the garden of the Hesperides only as an advertisement of what was over the fence. I begin to find that the problem of raising fruit is nothing to that of getting it after it has matured. So long as the law, just in many respects, is in force against shooting birds and small boys, the gardener may sow in tears and reap in vain.

The power of a boy is, to me, something fearful. Consider what he can do. You buy and set out a choice pear-tree; you enrich the earth for it; you train and trim it, and vanquish the borer, and watch its slow growth. At length it rewards your care by producing two or three pears, which you cut up and divide in the family, declaring the flavor of the bit you eat to be something extraordinary. The next year, the little tree blossoms full, and sets well; and in the autumn has on its slender, drooping limbs half a bushel of fruit, daily growing more delicious in the sun. You show it to your friends, reading to them the French name, which you can never remember, on the label; and you take an honest pride in the successful fruit of long care. That night your pears shall be required of you by a boy! Along comes an irresponsible urchin, who has not been growing much longer than the tree, with not twenty-five cents worth of clothing on him, and in five minutes takes off every pear, and retires into safe obscurity. In five minutes the remorseless boy has undone your work of years, and with the easy nonchalance, I doubt not, of any agent of fate, in whose path nothing is sacred or safe.

And it is not of much consequence. The boy goes on his way,—to Congress, or to State Prison: in either place he will be accused of stealing, perhaps wrongfully. You learn, in time, that it is better to have had pears and lost them than not to have had pears at all. You come to know that the least (and rarest) part of the pleasure of raising fruit is the vulgar eating it. You recall your delight in conversing with the nurseryman, and looking at his illustrated catalogues, where all the pears are drawn perfect in form, and of extra size, and at that exact moment between ripeness and decay which it is so impossible to hit in practice. Fruit cannot be raised on this earth to taste as you imagine those pears would taste. For years you have this pleasure, unalloyed by any disenchanting reality. How you watch the tender twigs in spring, and the freshly forming bark, hovering about the healthy growing tree with your pruning-knife many a sunny morning! That is happiness. Then, if you know it, you are drinking the very wine of life; and when the sweet juices of the earth mount the limbs, and flow down the tender stem, ripening and reddening the pendent fruit, you feel that you somehow stand at the source of things, and have no unimportant share in the processes of Nature. Enter at this moment boy the destroyer, whose office is that of preserver as well; for, though he removes the fruit from your sight, it remains in your memory immortally ripe and desirable. The gardener needs all these consolations of a high philosophy.



EIGHTEENTH WEEK

Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently! If Ravaillac had not been imprisoned for debt, he would not have stabbed Henry of Navarre. If William of Orange had escaped assassination by Philip's emissaries; if France had followed the French Calvin, and embraced Protestant Calvinism, as it came very near doing towards the end of the sixteenth century; if the Continental ammunition had not given out at Bunker's Hill; if Blucher had not "come up" at Waterloo,—the lesson is, that things do not come up unless they are planted. When you go behind the historical scenery, you find there is a rope and pulley to effect every transformation which has astonished you. It was the rascality of a minister and a contractor five years before that lost the battle; and the cause of the defeat was worthless ammunition. I should like to know how many wars have been caused by fits of indigestion, and how many more dynasties have been upset by the love of woman than by the hate of man. It is only because we are ill informed that anything surprises us; and we are disappointed because we expect that for which we have not provided.

I had too vague expectations of what my garden would do of itself. A garden ought to produce one everything,—just as a business ought to support a man, and a house ought to keep itself. We had a convention lately to resolve that the house should keep itself; but it won't. There has been a lively time in our garden this summer; but it seems to me there is very little to show for it. It has been a terrible campaign; but where is the indemnity? Where are all "sass" and Lorraine? It is true that we have lived on the country; but we desire, besides, the fruits of the war. There are no onions, for one thing. I am quite ashamed to take people into my garden, and have them notice the absence of onions. It is very marked. In onion is strength; and a garden without it lacks flavor. The onion in its satin wrappings is among the most beautiful of vegetables; and it is the only one that represents the essence of things. It can almost be said to have a soul. You take off coat after coat, and the onion is still there; and, when the last one is removed, who dare say that the onion itself is destroyed, though you can weep over its departed spirit? If there is any one thing on this fallen earth that the angels in heaven weep over—more than another, it is the onion.

I know that there is supposed to be a prejudice against the onion; but I think there is rather a cowardice in regard to it. I doubt not that all men and women love the onion; but few confess their love. Affection for it is concealed. Good New-Englanders are as shy of owning it as they are of talking about religion. Some people have days on which they eat onions,—what you might call "retreats," or their "Thursdays." The act is in the nature of a religious ceremony, an Eleusinian mystery; not a breath of it must get abroad. On that day they see no company; they deny the kiss of greeting to the dearest friend; they retire within themselves, and hold communion with one of the most pungent and penetrating manifestations of the moral vegetable world. Happy is said to be the family which can eat onions together. They are, for the time being, separate from the world, and have a harmony of aspiration. There is a hint here for the reformers. Let them become apostles of the onion; let them eat, and preach it to their fellows, and circulate tracts of it in the form of seeds. In the onion is the hope of universal brotherhood. If all men will eat onions at all times, they will come into a universal sympathy. Look at Italy. I hope I am not mistaken as to the cause of her unity. It was the Reds who preached the gospel which made it possible. All the Reds of Europe, all the sworn devotees of the mystic Mary Ann, eat of the common vegetable. Their oaths are strong with it. It is the food, also, of the common people of Italy. All the social atmosphere of that delicious land is laden with it. Its odor is a practical democracy. In the churches all are alike: there is one faith, one smell. The entrance of Victor Emanuel into Rome is only the pompous proclamation of a unity which garlic had already accomplished; and yet we, who boast of our democracy, eat onions in secret.

I now see that I have left out many of the most moral elements. Neither onions, parsnips, carrots, nor cabbages are here. I have never seen a garden in the autumn before, without the uncouth cabbage in it; but my garden gives the impression of a garden without a head. The cabbage is the rose of Holland. I admire the force by which it compacts its crisp leaves into a solid head. The secret of it would be priceless to the world. We should see less expansive foreheads with nothing within. Even the largest cabbages are not always the best. But I mention these things, not from any sympathy I have with the vegetables named, but to show how hard it is to go contrary to the expectations of society. Society expects every man to have certain things in his garden. Not to raise cabbage is as if one had no pew in church. Perhaps we shall come some day to free churches and free gardens; when I can show my neighbor through my tired garden, at the end of the season, when skies are overcast, and brown leaves are swirling down, and not mind if he does raise his eyebrows when he observes, "Ah! I see you have none of this, and of that." At present we want the moral courage to plant only what we need; to spend only what will bring us peace, regardless of what is going on over the fence. We are half ruined by conformity; but we should be wholly ruined without it; and I presume I shall make a garden next year that will be as popular as possible.

And this brings me to what I see may be a crisis in life. I begin to feel the temptation of experiment. Agriculture, horticulture, floriculture,—these are vast fields, into which one may wander away, and never be seen more. It seemed to me a very simple thing, this gardening; but it opens up astonishingly. It is like the infinite possibilities in worsted-work. Polly sometimes says to me, "I wish you would call at Bobbin's, and match that skein of worsted for me, when you are in town." Time was, I used to accept such a commission with alacrity and self-confidence. I went to Bobbin's, and asked one of his young men, with easy indifference, to give me some of that. The young man, who is as handsome a young man as ever I looked at, and who appears to own the shop, and whose suave superciliousness would be worth everything to a cabinet minister who wanted to repel applicants for place, says, "I have n't an ounce: I have sent to Paris, and I expect it every day. I have a good deal of difficulty in getting that shade in my assortment." To think that he is in communication with Paris, and perhaps with Persia! Respect for such a being gives place to awe. I go to another shop, holding fast to my scarlet clew. There I am shown a heap of stuff, with more colors and shades than I had supposed existed in all the world. What a blaze of distraction! I have been told to get as near the shade as I could; and so I compare and contrast, till the whole thing seems to me about of one color. But I can settle my mind on nothing. The affair assumes a high degree of importance. I am satisfied with nothing but perfection. I don't know what may happen if the shade is not matched. I go to another shop, and another, and another. At last a pretty girl, who could make any customer believe that green is blue, matches the shade in a minute. I buy five cents worth. That was the order. Women are the most economical persons that ever were. I have spent two hours in this five-cent business; but who shall say they were wasted, when I take the stuff home, and Polly says it is a perfect match, and looks so pleased, and holds it up with the work, at arm's length, and turns her head one side, and then takes her needle, and works it in? Working in, I can see, my own obligingness and amiability with every stitch. Five cents is dirt cheap for such a pleasure.

The things I may do in my garden multiply on my vision. How fascinating have the catalogues of the nurserymen become! Can I raise all those beautiful varieties, each one of which is preferable to the other? Shall I try all the kinds of grapes, and all the sorts of pears? I have already fifteen varieties of strawberries (vines); and I have no idea that I have hit the right one. Must I subscribe to all the magazines and weekly papers which offer premiums of the best vines? Oh, that all the strawberries were rolled into one, that I could inclose all its lusciousness in one bite! Oh for the good old days when a strawberry was a strawberry, and there was no perplexity about it! There are more berries now than churches; and no one knows what to believe. I have seen gardens which were all experiment, given over to every new thing, and which produced little or nothing to the owners, except the pleasure of expectation. People grow pear-trees at great expense of time and money, which never yield them more than four pears to the tree. The fashions of ladies' bonnets are nothing to the fashions of nurserymen. He who attempts to follow them has a business for life; but his life may be short. If I enter upon this wide field of horticultural experiment, I shall leave peace behind; and I may expect the ground to open, and swallow me and all my fortune. May Heaven keep me to the old roots and herbs of my forefathers! Perhaps in the world of modern reforms this is not possible; but I intend now to cultivate only the standard things, and learn to talk knowingly of the rest. Of course, one must keep up a reputation. I have seen people greatly enjoy themselves, and elevate themselves in their own esteem, in a wise and critical talk about all the choice wines, while they were sipping a decoction, the original cost of which bore no relation to the price of grapes.



NINETEENTH WEEK

The closing scenes are not necessarily funereal. A garden should be got ready for winter as well as for summer. When one goes into winter-quarters, he wants everything neat and trim. Expecting high winds, we bring everything into close reef. Some men there are who never shave (if they are so absurd as ever to shave), except when they go abroad, and who do not take care to wear polished boots in the bosoms of their families. I like a man who shaves (next to one who does n't shave) to satisfy his own conscience, and not for display, and who dresses as neatly at home as he does anywhere. Such a man will be likely to put his garden in complete order before the snow comes, so that its last days shall not present a scene of melancholy ruin and decay.

I confess that, after such an exhausting campaign, I felt a great temptation to retire, and call it a drawn engagement. But better counsels prevailed. I determined that the weeds should not sleep on the field of battle. I routed them out, and leveled their works. I am master of the situation. If I have made a desert, I at least have peace; but it is not quite a desert. The strawberries, the raspberries, the celery, the turnips, wave green above the clean earth, with no enemy in sight. In these golden October days no work is more fascinating than this getting ready for spring. The sun is no longer a burning enemy, but a friend, illuminating all the open space, and warming the mellow soil. And the pruning and clearing away of rubbish, and the fertilizing, go on with something of the hilarity of a wake, rather than the despondency of other funerals. When the wind begins to come out of the northwest of set purpose, and to sweep the ground with low and searching fierceness, very different from the roistering, jolly bluster of early fall, I have put the strawberries under their coverlet of leaves, pruned the grape-vines and laid them under the soil, tied up the tender plants, given the fruit trees a good, solid meal about the roots; and so I turn away, writing Resurgam on the gatepost. And Calvin, aware that the summer is past and the harvest is ended, and that a mouse in the kitchen is worth two birds gone south, scampers away to the house with his tail in the air.

And yet I am not perfectly at rest in my mind. I know that this is only a truce until the parties recover their exhausted energies. All winter long the forces of chemistry will be mustering under ground, repairing the losses, calling up the reserves, getting new strength from my surface-fertilizing bounty, and making ready for the spring campaign. They will open it before I am ready: while the snow is scarcely melted, and the ground is not passable, they will begin to move on my works; and the fight will commence. Yet how deceitfully it will open to the music of birds and the soft enchantment of the spring mornings! I shall even be permitted to win a few skirmishes: the secret forces will even wait for me to plant and sow, and show my full hand, before they come on in heavy and determined assault. There are already signs of an internecine fight with the devil-grass, which has intrenched itself in a considerable portion of my garden-patch. It contests the ground inch by inch; and digging it out is very much such labor as eating a piece of choke-cherry pie with the stones all in. It is work, too, that I know by experience I shall have to do alone. Every man must eradicate his own devil-grass. The neighbors who have leisure to help you in grape-picking time are all busy when devil-grass is most aggressive. My neighbors' visits are well timed: it is only their hens which have seasons for their own.

I am told that abundant and rank weeds are signs of a rich soil; but I have noticed that a thin, poor soil grows little but weeds. I am inclined to think that the substratum is the same, and that the only choice in this world is what kind of weeds you will have. I am not much attracted by the gaunt, flavorless mullein, and the wiry thistle of upland country pastures, where the grass is always gray, as if the world were already weary and sick of life. The awkward, uncouth wickedness of remote country-places, where culture has died out after the first crop, is about as disagreeable as the ranker and richer vice of city life, forced by artificial heat and the juices of an overfed civilization. There is no doubt that, on the whole, the rich soil is the best: the fruit of it has body and flavor. To what affluence does a woman (to take an instance, thank Heaven, which is common) grow, with favoring circumstances, under the stimulus of the richest social and intellectual influences! I am aware that there has been a good deal said in poetry about the fringed gentian and the harebell of rocky districts and waysides, and I know that it is possible for maidens to bloom in very slight soil into a wild-wood grace and beauty; yet, the world through, they lack that wealth of charms, that tropic affluence of both person and mind, which higher and more stimulating culture brings,—the passion as well as the soul glowing in the Cloth-of-Gold rose. Neither persons nor plants are ever fully themselves until they are cultivated to their highest. I, for one, have no fear that society will be too much enriched. The only question is about keeping down the weeds; and I have learned by experience, that we need new sorts of hoes, and more disposition to use them.

Moral Deduction.—The difference between soil and society is evident. We bury decay in the earth; we plant in it the perishing; we feed it with offensive refuse: but nothing grows out of it that is not clean; it gives us back life and beauty for our rubbish. Society returns us what we give it.

Pretending to reflect upon these things, but in reality watching the blue-jays, who are pecking at the purple berries of the woodbine on the south gable, I approach the house. Polly is picking up chestnuts on the sward, regardless of the high wind which rattles them about her head and upon the glass roof of her winter-garden. The garden, I see, is filled with thrifty plants, which will make it always summer there. The callas about the fountain will be in flower by Christmas: the plant appears to keep that holiday in her secret heart all summer. I close the outer windows as we go along, and congratulate myself that we are ready for winter. For the winter-garden I have no responsibility: Polly has entire charge of it. I am only required to keep it heated, and not too hot either; to smoke it often for the death of the bugs; to water it once a day; to move this and that into the sun and out of the sun pretty constantly: but she does all the work. We never relinquish that theory.

As we pass around the house, I discover a boy in the ravine filling a bag with chestnuts and hickorynuts. They are not plenty this year; and I suggest the propriety of leaving some for us. The boy is a little slow to take the idea: but he has apparently found the picking poor, and exhausted it; for, as he turns away down the glen, he hails me with,

"Mister, I say, can you tell me where I can find some walnuts?"

The coolness of this world grows upon me. It is time to go in and light a wood-fire on the hearth.



CALVIN



NOTE.—The following brief Memoir of one of the characters in this book is added by his friend, in the hope that the record of an exemplary fife in an humble sphere may be of some service to the world.

HARTFORD, January, 1880.



CALVIN

A STUDY OF CHARACTER

Calvin is dead. His life, long to him, but short for the rest of us, was not marked by startling adventures, but his character was so uncommon and his qualities were so worthy of imitation, that I have been asked by those who personally knew him to set down my recollections of his career.

His origin and ancestry were shrouded in mystery; even his age was a matter of pure conjecture. Although he was of the Maltese race, I have reason to suppose that he was American by birth as he certainly was in sympathy. Calvin was given to me eight years ago by Mrs. Stowe, but she knew nothing of his age or origin. He walked into her house one day out of the great unknown and became at once at home, as if he had been always a friend of the family. He appeared to have artistic and literary tastes, and it was as if he had inquired at the door if that was the residence of the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and, upon being assured that it was, bad decided to dwell there. This is, of course, fanciful, for his antecedents were wholly unknown, but in his time he could hardly have been in any household where he would not have heard "Uncle Tom's Cabin" talked about. When he came to Mrs. Stowe, he was as large as he ever was, and apparently as old as he ever became. Yet there was in him no appearance of age; he was in the happy maturity of all his powers, and you would rather have said that in that maturity he had found the secret of perpetual youth. And it was as difficult to believe that he would ever be aged as it was to imagine that he had ever been in immature youth. There was in him a mysterious perpetuity.

After some years, when Mrs. Stowe made her winter home in Florida, Calvin came to live with us. From the first moment, he fell into the ways of the house and assumed a recognized position in the family,—I say recognized, because after he became known he was always inquired for by visitors, and in the letters to the other members of the family he always received a message. Although the least obtrusive of beings, his individuality always made itself felt.

His personal appearance had much to do with this, for he was of royal mould, and had an air of high breeding. He was large, but he had nothing of the fat grossness of the celebrated Angora family; though powerful, he was exquisitely proportioned, and as graceful in every movement as a young leopard. When he stood up to open a door—he opened all the doors with old-fashioned latches—he was portentously tall, and when stretched on the rug before the fire he seemed too long for this world—as indeed he was. His coat was the finest and softest I have ever seen, a shade of quiet Maltese; and from his throat downward, underneath, to the white tips of his feet, he wore the whitest and most delicate ermine; and no person was ever more fastidiously neat. In his finely formed head you saw something of his aristocratic character; the ears were small and cleanly cut, there was a tinge of pink in the nostrils, his face was handsome, and the expression of his countenance exceedingly intelligent—I should call it even a sweet expression, if the term were not inconsistent with his look of alertness and sagacity.

It is difficult to convey a just idea of his gayety in connection with his dignity and gravity, which his name expressed. As we know nothing of his family, of course it will be understood that Calvin was his Christian name. He had times of relaxation into utter playfulness, delighting in a ball of yarn, catching sportively at stray ribbons when his mistress was at her toilet, and pursuing his own tail, with hilarity, for lack of anything better. He could amuse himself by the hour, and he did not care for children; perhaps something in his past was present to his memory. He had absolutely no bad habits, and his disposition was perfect. I never saw him exactly angry, though I have seen his tail grow to an enormous size when a strange cat appeared upon his lawn. He disliked cats, evidently regarding them as feline and treacherous, and he had no association with them. Occasionally there would be heard a night concert in the shrubbery. Calvin would ask to have the door opened, and then you would hear a rush and a "pestzt," and the concert would explode, and Calvin would quietly come in and resume his seat on the hearth. There was no trace of anger in his manner, but he would n't have any of that about the house. He had the rare virtue of magnanimity. Although he had fixed notions about his own rights, and extraordinary persistency in getting them, he never showed temper at a repulse; he simply and firmly persisted till he had what he wanted. His diet was one point; his idea was that of the scholars about dictionaries,—to "get the best." He knew as well as any one what was in the house, and would refuse beef if turkey was to be had; and if there were oysters, he would wait over the turkey to see if the oysters would not be forthcoming. And yet he was not a gross gourmand; he would eat bread if he saw me eating it, and thought he was not being imposed on. His habits of feeding, also, were refined; he never used a knife, and he would put up his hand and draw the fork down to his mouth as gracefully as a grown person. Unless necessity compelled, he would not eat in the kitchen, but insisted upon his meals in the dining-room, and would wait patiently, unless a stranger were present; and then he was sure to importune the visitor, hoping that the latter was ignorant of the rule of the house, and would give him something. They used to say that he preferred as his table-cloth on the floor a certain well-known church journal; but this was said by an Episcopalian. So far as I know, he had no religious prejudices, except that he did not like the association with Romanists. He tolerated the servants, because they belonged to the house, and would sometimes linger by the kitchen stove; but the moment visitors came in he arose, opened the door, and marched into the drawing-room. Yet he enjoyed the company of his equals, and never withdrew, no matter how many callers—whom he recognized as of his society—might come into the drawing-room. Calvin was fond of company, but he wanted to choose it; and I have no doubt that his was an aristocratic fastidiousness rather than one of faith. It is so with most people.

The intelligence of Calvin was something phenomenal, in his rank of life. He established a method of communicating his wants, and even some of his sentiments; and he could help himself in many things. There was a furnace register in a retired room, where he used to go when he wished to be alone, that he always opened when he desired more heat; but he never shut it, any more than he shut the door after himself. He could do almost everything but speak; and you would declare sometimes that you could see a pathetic longing to do that in his intelligent face. I have no desire to overdraw his qualities, but if there was one thing in him more noticeable than another, it was his fondness for nature. He could content himself for hours at a low window, looking into the ravine and at the great trees, noting the smallest stir there; he delighted, above all things, to accompany me walking about the garden, hearing the birds, getting the smell of the fresh earth, and rejoicing in the sunshine. He followed me and gamboled like a dog, rolling over on the turf and exhibiting his delight in a hundred ways. If I worked, he sat and watched me, or looked off over the bank, and kept his ear open to the twitter in the cherry-trees. When it stormed, he was sure to sit at the window, keenly watching the rain or the snow, glancing up and down at its falling; and a winter tempest always delighted him. I think he was genuinely fond of birds, but, so far as I know, he usually confined himself to one a day; he never killed, as some sportsmen do, for the sake of killing, but only as civilized people do,—from necessity. He was intimate with the flying-squirrels who dwell in the chestnut-trees,—too intimate, for almost every day in the summer he would bring in one, until he nearly discouraged them. He was, indeed, a superb hunter, and would have been a devastating one, if his bump of destructiveness had not been offset by a bump of moderation. There was very little of the brutality of the lower animals about him; I don't think he enjoyed rats for themselves, but he knew his business, and for the first few months of his residence with us he waged an awful campaign against the horde, and after that his simple presence was sufficient to deter them from coming on the premises. Mice amused him, but he usually considered them too small game to be taken seriously; I have seen him play for an hour with a mouse, and then let him go with a royal condescension. In this whole, matter of "getting a living," Calvin was a great contrast to the rapacity of the age in which he lived.

I hesitate a little to speak of his capacity for friendship and the affectionateness of his nature, for I know from his own reserve that he would not care to have it much talked about. We understood each other perfectly, but we never made any fuss about it; when I spoke his name and snapped my fingers, he came to me; when I returned home at night, he was pretty sure to be waiting for me near the gate, and would rise and saunter along the walk, as if his being there were purely accidental,—so shy was he commonly of showing feeling; and when I opened the door, he never rushed in, like a cat, but loitered, and lounged, as if he had no intention of going in, but would condescend to. And yet, the fact was, he knew dinner was ready, and he was bound to be there. He kept the run of dinner-time. It happened sometimes, during our absence in the summer, that dinner would be early, and Calvin, walking about the grounds, missed it and came in late. But he never made a mistake the second day. There was one thing he never did,—he never rushed through an open doorway. He never forgot his dignity. If he had asked to have the door opened, and was eager to go out, he always went deliberately; I can see him now standing on the sill, looking about at the sky as if he was thinking whether it were worth while to take an umbrella, until he was near having his tail shut in.

His friendship was rather constant than demonstrative. When we returned from an absence of nearly two years, Calvin welcomed us with evident pleasure, but showed his satisfaction rather by tranquil happiness than by fuming about. He had the faculty of making us glad to get home. It was his constancy that was so attractive. He liked companionship, but he wouldn't be petted, or fussed over, or sit in any one's lap a moment; he always extricated himself from such familiarity with dignity and with no show of temper. If there was any petting to be done, however, he chose to do it. Often he would sit looking at me, and then, moved by a delicate affection, come and pull at my coat and sleeve until he could touch my face with his nose, and then go away contented. He had a habit of coming to my study in the morning, sitting quietly by my side or on the table for hours, watching the pen run over the paper, occasionally swinging his tail round for a blotter, and then going to sleep among the papers by the inkstand. Or, more rarely, he would watch the writing from a perch on my shoulder. Writing always interested him, and, until he understood it, he wanted to hold the pen.

He always held himself in a kind of reserve with his friend, as if he had said, "Let us respect our personality, and not make a 'mess' of friendship." He saw, with Emerson, the risk of degrading it to trivial conveniency. "Why insist on rash personal relations with your friend?" "Leave this touching and clawing." Yet I would not give an unfair notion of his aloofness, his fine sense of the sacredness of the me and the not-me. And, at the risk of not being believed, I will relate an incident, which was often repeated. Calvin had the practice of passing a portion of the night in the contemplation of its beauties, and would come into our chamber over the roof of the conservatory through the open window, summer and winter, and go to sleep on the foot of my bed. He would do this always exactly in this way; he never was content to stay in the chamber if we compelled him to go upstairs and through the door. He had the obstinacy of General Grant. But this is by the way. In the morning, he performed his toilet and went down to breakfast with the rest of the family. Now, when the mistress was absent from home, and at no other time, Calvin would come in the morning, when the bell rang, to the head of the bed, put up his feet and look into my face, follow me about when I rose, "assist" at the dressing, and in many purring ways show his fondness, as if he had plainly said, "I know that she has gone away, but I am here." Such was Calvin in rare moments.

He had his limitations. Whatever passion he had for nature, he had no conception of art. There was sent to him once a fine and very expressive cat's head in bronze, by Fremiet. I placed it on the floor. He regarded it intently, approached it cautiously and crouchingly, touched it with his nose, perceived the fraud, turned away abruptly, and never would notice it afterward. On the whole, his life was not only a successful one, but a happy one. He never had but one fear, so far as I know: he had a mortal and a reasonable terror of plumbers. He would never stay in the house when they were here. No coaxing could quiet him. Of course he did n't share our fear about their charges, but he must have had some dreadful experience with them in that portion of his life which is unknown to us. A plumber was to him the devil, and I have no doubt that, in his scheme, plumbers were foreordained to do him mischief.

In speaking of his worth, it has never occurred to me to estimate Calvin by the worldly standard. I know that it is customary now, when any one dies, to ask how much he was worth, and that no obituary in the newspapers is considered complete without such an estimate. The plumbers in our house were one day overheard to say that, "They say that she says that he says that he wouldn't take a hundred dollars for him." It is unnecessary to say that I never made such a remark, and that, so far as Calvin was concerned, there was no purchase in money.

As I look back upon it, Calvin's life seems to me a fortunate one, for it was natural and unforced. He ate when he was hungry, slept when he was sleepy, and enjoyed existence to the very tips of his toes and the end of his expressive and slow-moving tail. He delighted to roam about the garden, and stroll among the trees, and to lie on the green grass and luxuriate in all the sweet influences of summer. You could never accuse him of idleness, and yet he knew the secret of repose. The poet who wrote so prettily of him that his little life was rounded with a sleep, understated his felicity; it was rounded with a good many. His conscience never seemed to interfere with his slumbers. In fact, he had good habits and a contented mind. I can see him now walk in at the study door, sit down by my chair, bring his tail artistically about his feet, and look up at me with unspeakable happiness in his handsome face. I often thought that he felt the dumb limitation which denied him the power of language. But since he was denied speech, he scorned the inarticulate mouthings of the lower animals. The vulgar mewing and yowling of the cat species was beneath him; he sometimes uttered a sort of articulate and well-bred ejaculation, when he wished to call attention to something that he considered remarkable, or to some want of his, but he never went whining about. He would sit for hours at a closed window, when he desired to enter, without a murmur, and when it was opened, he never admitted that he had been impatient by "bolting" in. Though speech he had not, and the unpleasant kind of utterance given to his race he would not use, he had a mighty power of purr to express his measureless content with congenial society. There was in him a musical organ with stops of varied power and expression, upon which I have no doubt he could have performed Scarlatti's celebrated cat's-fugue.

Whether Calvin died of old age, or was carried off by one of the diseases incident to youth, it is impossible to say; for his departure was as quiet as his advent was mysterious. I only know that he appeared to us in this world in his perfect stature and beauty, and that after a time, like Lohengrin, he withdrew. In his illness there was nothing more to be regretted than in all his blameless life. I suppose there never was an illness that had more of dignity, and sweetness and resignation in it. It came on gradually, in a kind of listlessness and want of appetite. An alarming symptom was his preference for the warmth of a furnace-register to the lively sparkle of the open woodfire. Whatever pain he suffered, he bore it in silence, and seemed only anxious not to obtrude his malady. We tempted him with the delicacies of the season, but it soon became impossible for him to eat, and for two weeks he ate or drank scarcely anything. Sometimes he made an effort to take something, but it was evident that he made the effort to please us. The neighbors—and I am convinced that the advice of neighbors is never good for anything—suggested catnip. He would n't even smell it. We had the attendance of an amateur practitioner of medicine, whose real office was the cure of souls, but nothing touched his case. He took what was offered, but it was with the air of one to whom the time for pellets was passed. He sat or lay day after day almost motionless, never once making a display of those vulgar convulsions or contortions of pain which are so disagreeable to society. His favorite place was on the brightest spot of a Smyrna rug by the conservatory, where the sunlight fell and he could hear the fountain play. If we went to him and exhibited our interest in his condition, he always purred in recognition of our sympathy. And when I spoke his name, he looked up with an expression that said, "I understand it, old fellow, but it's no use." He was to all who came to visit him a model of calmness and patience in affliction.

I was absent from home at the last, but heard by daily postal-card of his failing condition; and never again saw him alive. One sunny morning, he rose from his rug, went into the conservatory (he was very thin then), walked around it deliberately, looking at all the plants he knew, and then went to the bay-window in the dining-room, and stood a long time looking out upon the little field, now brown and sere, and toward the garden, where perhaps the happiest hours of his life had been spent. It was a last look. He turned and walked away, laid himself down upon the bright spot in the rug, and quietly died.

It is not too much to say that a little shock went through the neighborhood when it was known that Calvin was dead, so marked was his individuality; and his friends, one after another, came in to see him. There was no sentimental nonsense about his obsequies; it was felt that any parade would have been distasteful to him. John, who acted as undertaker, prepared a candle-box for him and I believe assumed a professional decorum; but there may have been the usual levity underneath, for I heard that he remarked in the kitchen that it was the "driest wake he ever attended." Everybody, however, felt a fondness for Calvin, and regarded him with a certain respect. Between him and Bertha there existed a great friendship, and she apprehended his nature; she used to say that sometimes she was afraid of him, he looked at her so intelligently; she was never certain that he was what he appeared to be.

When I returned, they had laid Calvin on a table in an upper chamber by an open window. It was February. He reposed in a candle-box, lined about the edge with evergreen, and at his head stood a little wine-glass with flowers. He lay with his head tucked down in his arms,—a favorite position of his before the fire,—as if asleep in the comfort of his soft and exquisite fur. It was the involuntary exclamation of those who saw him, "How natural he looks!" As for myself, I said nothing. John buried him under the twin hawthorn-trees,—one white and the other pink,—in a spot where Calvin was fond of lying and listening to the hum of summer insects and the twitter of birds.

Perhaps I have failed to make appear the individuality of character that was so evident to those who knew him. At any rate, I have set down nothing concerning him, but the literal truth. He was always a mystery. I did not know whence he came; I do not know whither he has gone. I would not weave one spray of falsehood in the wreath I lay upon his grave.

THE END