a sort of cousin of the fat weed), and utterly cast it out.
It is, however, to be expected, that retributive justice would visit
the innocent as well as the guilty of an offending family. This is only
another proof of the wide sweep of moral forces. I suppose that it is
as necessary in the vegetable world as it is elsewhere to avoid the
appearance of evil.

In offering you the fruit of my garden, which has been gathered from
week to week, without much reference to the progress of the crops or the
drought, I desire to acknowledge an influence which has lent half the
charm to my labor. 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; but
your suggestions have been invaluable, and, whenever used, have been
paid for. Your horticultural inquiries have been of a nature to astonish
the vegetable world, if it listened, and were a constant inspiration to
research. There was almost nothing that you did not wish to know;
and this, added to what I wished to know, made a boundless field for
discovery. What might have become of the garden, if your advice had been
followed, a good Providence only knows; but I never worked there without
a consciousness that you might at any moment come down the walk, under
the grape-arbor, bestowing glances of approval, that were none the
worse for not being critical; exercising a sort of superintendence that
elevated gardening into a fine art; expressing a wonder that was as
complimentary to me as it was to Nature; bringing an atmosphere which
made the garden a region of romance, the soil of which was set apart for
fruits native to climes unseen. It was this bright presence that filled
the garden, as it did the summer, with light, and now leaves upon it
that tender play of color and bloom which is called among the Alps the
after-glow.

NOOK FARM, HARTFORD, October, 1870

C. D. W.

PRELIMINARY

The love of dirt is among the earliest of passions, as it is the latest.
Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are
dirty, we are pure. Fondness for the ground comes back to a man after
he has run the round of pleasure and business, eaten dirt, and sown
wild-oats, drifted about the world, and taken the wind of all its
moods. The love of digging in the ground (or