of glass needed setting; and as to painting
and papering, there was no end to that. Then my wife wanted a door cut
here, to make our bedroom more convenient, and a china closet knocked
up there, where no china closet before had been. We even ventured on
throwing out a bay-window from our sitting-room, because we had
luckily lighted on a workman who was so cheap that it was an actual
saving of money to employ him. And to be sure our darling little
cottage did lift up its head wonderfully for all this garnishing and
furbishing. I got up early every morning, and nailed up the
rosebushes, and my wife got up and watered geraniums, and both
flattered ourselves and each other on our early hours and thrifty
habits. But soon, like Adam and Eve in Paradise, we found our little
domain to ask more hands than ours to get it into shape. So says I to
my wife, "I will bring out a gardener when I come next time, and he
shall lay the garden out, and get it into order; and after that I can
easily keep it by the work of my leisure hours."

Our gardener was a very sublime sort of man,--an Englishman, and of
course used to laying out noblemen's places,--and we became as
grasshoppers in our own eyes when he talked of Lord This and That's
estate, and began to question us about our carriage drive and
conservatory; and we could with difficulty bring the gentleman down to
any understanding of the humble limits of our expectations; merely to
dress out the walks, and lay out a kitchen garden, and plant potatoes,
turnips, beets and carrots, was quite a descent for him. In fact, so
strong were his aesthetic preferences, that he persuaded my wife to let
him dig all the turf off from a green square opposite the bay window,
and to lay it out into divers little triangles, resembling small
pieces of pie, together with circles, mounds, and various other
geometrical ornaments, the planning and planting of which soon
engrossed my wife's whole soul. The planting of the potatoes, beets,
carrots, etc., was intrusted to a raw Irishman; for as to me, to
confess the truth, I began to fear that digging did not agree with me.
It is true that I was exceedingly vigorous at first, and actually
planted with my own hands two or three long rows of potatoes; after
which I got a turn of rheumatism in my shoulder, which lasted me a
week. Stooping down to plant beets and radishes gave me a vertigo, so
that I was obliged to content myself with a general superintendence
of the