some of the cedars of a diameter of two
or three inches and stack them away for Dahlia poles. Next season you
will become a victim of these gorgeous velvet flowers, I foresee,
especially as I have fully a barrel of the "potatoes" of some very
handsome varieties to bestow upon you. Make the most of Meyer, for he
will probably grow melancholy as soon as cool weather sets in and he
thinks of winter evenings and a sweetheart he has left in the
fatherland!

We have had several Germans and they all had _lieber schatz_, for
jealousy or the scorn of whom they had left home, were for the same
reason loath to stay away from it, and at the same time, owing to
contending emotions, were unable to work so that they might return.

Are you not thinking about returning to your indoor bed and board again?
With warm weather I fly out of the door as a second nature, but with a
smart promise of frost I turn about again and everything--furniture,
pictures, books, and the dear people themselves--seems refreshingly new
and wholly lovable!

If you are thinking of making out a book list of your needs as an answer
to your mother's or your "in-law's" query, "What do you want for
Christmas?" write at the beginning--Bailey's _Cyclopaedia of American
Horticulture_, in red ink. Lavinia and Martin Cortright gave it to us
last Christmas, the clearly printed first edition on substantial paper
in four thick volumes, mind you, and it is the referee and court of
appeals of the Garden, You, and I in general and myself in particular.
Not only will it tell you everything that you wish or ought to know, but
do it completely and truthfully. In short it is the perfect antidote to
_Garden Goozle_!

XIX

PANDORA'S CHEST

(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell)

_Woodridge, October 10_. Nearly a month of pen silence on my part,
during which I have felt many times as if I must go from one to another
of our chosen trees in the river woods and shake the leaves down so that
the transplanting might proceed forthwith, lest the early winter that
Amos Opie predicts both by a goose bone and certain symptoms of his own
shall overtake us. Be this as it may, the leaves thus far prefer their
airy quarters to huddling upon the damp ground.

However, there is another reason for haste more urgent than the fear of
frost--the melancholy vein that you predicted we should find in Meyer is
fast developing, and as we wish to have him leave us in a perfectly
natural way, we