e occupant, I at once discovered that I was
conversing with one infinitely above the situation she was filling.
Indeed, if courteousness, gentleness, and the manifestation of a sincere
desire to gratify the wishes of another are to be considered as
characteristic of a lady, this woman was one. I did not notice how she
dressed, but only how pleasantly she spoke. I know it will be deemed
evidence of extreme simplicity in me to intimate the possibility of a
lady being found among the occupants of a public market. I know that
before one can be considered lady-like, in the common acceptation of the
term, she must be shown to be perfectly useless. By this rule she must
be devoid of everything that may entitle her to the love and protection
which she claims of right, before she can receive either. It is
fashionable with some ladies to be invalids and helpless, and some are
nursed and coddled up because they take on accomplishments of this
description. Of course no one will expect me to know how the domestic
arrangements of Adam and Eve were conducted. But I may presume that
Adam's dinners were prepared with as much gastronomic skill as had up
to that time been attained, and that if Eve had set up to be a
fashionable invalid, wholly dependent on Adam, and not a help-meet,
there would have been a domestic mutiny even in the Garden of Eden. Our
primal mother could not have been less pleasing because she happened to
be a capital cook. Thus the truly gentle heart will lose nothing of its
native gentleness, though forced by misfortune into a humbler station.
Such must have been the character of the woman I was addressing. There
was something in her voice, moreover, that struck me as a familiar
sound, and, long before our conversation had ended, I recognized her as
the widow whom, years ago, I had seen made the victim of a heartless
imposition at the counter of a slop-shop. She had gone through trial
after trial, and now, lady though she certainly was, there she stood at
a fruit-stand in the public market.

There was no difficulty in obtaining plants through her. Like some
others in the market, she sold many things on commission, among which
were strawberry-plants for the trucker who supplied her with fruit. I
engaged all I should need for an acre of ground, not then knowing how
many would be wanted. Then I went into a long course of inquiry touching
the business of raising and selling strawberries, but more particularly
in relation