hing on the subject since I began to hoe, except "Lothair," from
which I got my ideas of landscape gardening; and that I had worked the
garden entirely according to my own notions, except that I had borne in
mind his injunction, "to fight it out on this line if"--The President
stopped me abruptly, and said it was unnecessary to repeat that remark:
he thought he had heard it before. Indeed, he deeply regretted that he
had ever made it. Sometimes, he said, after hearing it in speeches,
and coming across it in resolutions, and reading it in newspapers, and
having it dropped jocularly by facetious politicians, who were boring
him for an office, about twenty-five times a day, say for a month, it
would get to running through his head, like the "shoo-fly" song
which B-tl-r sings in the House, until it did seem as if he should go
distracted. He said, no man could stand that kind of sentence hammering
on his brain for years.

The President was so much pleased with my management of the garden,
that he offered me (at least, I so understood him) the position of head
gardener at the White House, to have care of the exotics. I told him
that I thanked him, but that I did not desire any foreign appointment.
I had resolved, when the administration came in, not to take an
appointment; and I had kept my resolution. As to any home office, I was
poor, but honest; and, of course, it would be useless for me to take
one. The President mused a moment, and then smiled, and said he would
see what could be done for me. I did not change the subject; but nothing
further was said by General Gr-nt.

The President is a great talker (contrary to the general impression);
but I think he appreciated his quiet hour in my garden. He said it
carried him back to his youth farther than anything he had seen lately.
He looked forward with delight to the time when he could again have his
private garden, grow his own lettuce and tomatoes, and not have to get
so much "sarce" from Congress.

The chair in which the President sat, while declining to take a glass of
lager I have had destroyed, in order that no one may sit in it. It
was the only way to save it, if I may so speak. It would have been
impossible to keep it from use by any precautions. There are people who
would have sat in it, if the seat had been set with iron spikes. Such is
the adoration of Station.

NINTH WEEK

I am more and more impressed with the moral qualities of vegetables, and
contempl