they will be fine as well as fit.

Good-bye, Little Friend,

Yours, &c.

LETTER II.

"The tropics may have their delights; but they have not
turf, and the world without turf is a dreary desert. The
original Garden of Eden could not have had such turf as one
sees in England.

* * * * *

"Woman always did, from the first, make a muss in a garden.

* * * * *

"Nevertheless, what a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron
back, with a hinge in it."

_Pusley; or, My Summer in a Garden_.--C. D. WARNER.

DEAR LITTLE FRIEND,

Do you know the little book from which these sayings are quoted? It is
one you can laugh over by yourself, again and again. A very good
specimen of that curious, new-world kind of wit--American humour; and
also full of the truest sense of natural beauty and of gardening
delights.

Mr. Warner is not complimentary to woman's work in the garden, though
he displays all the graceful deference of his countrymen to the weaker
sex. In the charming dedication to his wife, whilst desiring "to
acknowledge an influence which has lent half the charm to my labour,"
he adds: "If I were in a court of justice, or injustice, under oath, I
should not like to say that, either in the wooing days of spring, or
under the suns of the summer solstice, you had been, either with hoe,
rake, or miniature spade, of the least use in the garden." Perhaps our
fair cousins on the other side of the Atlantic do not _grub_ so
energetically as we do. Certainly, with us it is very common for the
ladies of the family to be the practical gardeners, the master of the
house caring chiefly for a good general effect, with tidy walks and
grassplots, and displaying less of that almost maternal solicitude
which does bring flowers to perfection.

I have sometimes thought that it would be a good division of labour in
a Little Garden, if, where Joan coddles the roses and rears the
seedlings, Darby would devote some of his leisure to the walks and
grassplots.

Few things in one's garden are pleasanter to one's own eye, or gain
more admiration from others, than well-kept turf. Green grass is one
of the charms of the British Isles, which are emerald isles
throughout, though Ireland is so _par excellence_. It is so much a
matter of course to us that we hardly realize this till we hear or
read what foreigners say about it, and also our own