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Admiral Darling was very particular in trying to keep his grounds and
garden tolerably tidy always. But he never succeeded, for the simple
reason that he listened to every one's excuses; and not understanding a
walk or a lawn half so well as the deck of a battle-ship, he was always
defeated in argument.

"Here's a state of things!" he used to say in summer-time; "thistles
full of seed within a biscuit-heave of my front door, and other
things--I forget their names--with heads like the head of a capstan
bursting, all as full of seeds as a purser is of lies!"

"Your lordship do not understand them subjects," Mr. Swipes, the head
gardener, was in the habit of replying; "and small blame to you, in my
opinion, after so many years upon the briny wave. Ah! they can't grow
them things there."

"Swipes, that is true, but to my mind not at all a satisfactory reason
for growing them here, just in front of the house and the windows. I
don't mind a few in the kitchen-garden, but you know as well as I do,
Swipes, that they can have no proper business here."

"I did hear tell down to the Club, last night," Mr. Swipes would reply,
after wiping his forehead, as if his whole mind were perspired away,
"though I don't pretend to say how far true it may be, that all the
land of England is to be cultivated for the public good, same as on
the continence, without no propriety or privacy, my lord. But I don't
altogether see how they be to do it. So I thought I'd better ask your
lordship."

"For the public good! The public-house good, you mean." The Admiral
answered nine times out of ten, being easily led from the track of his
wrath, and tired of telling Swipes that he was not a lord. "How
many times more must I tell you, Swipes, that I hate that Jacobin
association? Can you tell me of one seaman belonging to it? A set of
fish-jobbers, and men with barrows, and cheap-jacks from up the country.
Not one of my tenants would be such a fool as to go there, even if I
allowed him. I make great allowances for you, Swipes, because of your
obstinate nature. But don't let me hear of that Club any more, or YOU
may go and cultivate for the public good."

"Your lordship knows that I goes there for nothing except to keep up my
burial. And with all the work there is upon this place, the Lord only
knows when I may be requiring of it. Ah! I never see the like; I never
did. And a blade of grass the wrong way comes down on poor old Swipes!"

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