第27章

It is said that absence conquers all things, love included; but it has a contrary effect on a garden.I was absent for two or three weeks.I left my garden a paradise, as paradises go in this protoplastic world; and when I returned, the trail of the serpent was over it all, so to speak.(This is in addition to the actual snakes in it, which are large enough to strangle children of average size.)I asked Polly if she had seen to the garden while I was away, and she said she had.I found that all the melons had been seen to, and the early grapes and pears.The green worm had also seen to about half the celery; and a large flock of apparently perfectly domesticated chickens were roaming over the ground, gossiping in the hot September sun, and picking up any odd trifle that might be left.On the whole, the garden could not have been better seen to; though it would take a sharp eye to see the potato-vines amid the rampant grass and weeds.

The new strawberry-plants, for one thing, had taken advantage of my absence.Every one of them had sent out as many scarlet runners as an Indian tribe has.Some of them had blossomed; and a few had gone so far as to bear ripe berries,--long, pear-shaped fruit, hanging like the ear-pendants of an East Indian bride.I could not but admire the persistence of these zealous plants, which seemed determined to propagate themselves both by seeds and roots, and make sure of immortality in some way.Even the Colfax variety was as ambitious as the others.After having seen the declining letter of Mr.Colfax, I did not suppose that this vine would run any more, and intended to root it out.But one can never say what these politicians mean; and I shall let this variety grow until after the next election, at least; although I hear that the fruit is small, and rather sour.If there is any variety of strawberries that really declines to run, and devotes itself to a private life of fruit-bearing, I should like to get it.I may mention here, since we are on politics, that the Doolittle raspberries had sprawled all over the strawberry-bed's: so true is it that politics makes strange bedfellows.

But another enemy had come into the strawberries, which, after all that has been said in these papers, I am almost ashamed to mention.

But does the preacher in the pulpit, Sunday after Sunday, year after year, shrink from speaking of sin? I refer, of course, to the greatest enemy of mankind, " p-sl-y." The ground was carpeted with it.I should think that this was the tenth crop of the season; and it was as good as the first.I see no reason why our northern soil is not as prolific as that of the tropics, and will not produce as many crops in the year.The mistake we make is in trying to force things that are not natural to it.I have no doubt that, if we turn our attention to "pusley," we can beat the world.

I had no idea, until recently, how generally this simple and thrifty plant is feared and hated.Far beyond what I had regarded as the bounds of civilization, it is held as one of the mysteries of a fallen world; accompanying the home missionary on his wanderings, and preceding the footsteps of the Tract Society.I was not long ago in the Adirondacks.We had built a camp for the night, in the heart of the woods, high up on John's Brook and near the foot of Mount Marcy:

I can see the lovely spot now.It was on the bank of the crystal, rocky stream, at the foot of high and slender falls, which poured into a broad amber basin.Out of this basin we had just taken trout enough for our supper, which had been killed, and roasted over the fire on sharp sticks, and eaten before they had an opportunity to feel the chill of this deceitful world.We were lying under the hut of spruce-bark, on fragrant hemlock-boughs, talking, after supper.