University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.

Mrs. Ainsworth has been to York state. Nor is
this all,—though such events do not often befall
us,—but she has brought back as much of the
show as she could carry, and enriches our ears with
glowing accounts of all the wonders she saw and
heard. She set out a desperate utilitarian. Her
sleeves were only rationally large—her bonnet
only moderately fashionable, and she wondered,
for her part, how people could be so foolish as to
care about such nonsense. She believed in being
accommodating; would cut from the butter-plate
with her own knife, and dip her tea-spoon times
and again into the dish of preserves intended for
the whole company, without a misgiving. If a
wash basin was required, she could not see where
was the harm of using for that purpose the bowl,
which would in a few minutes be on duty on the
breakfast table, and she did not mind mislaying
her pocket-handkerchief, since an apron did just as
well for her. She always washed and combed in
the kitchen, though she had a bedroom adjoining,

and she considered it amiable to appropriate the
space under her bed to her husband's best boots, a
spare bridle or two, and the saddle when it happened
to be at home: it was “so handy.”

Her good man was so much of her mind that he
thought the true and sole use of a garden was to
raise onions and cabbages; and he went even a
little beyond her, and ploughed up every spring
the rose-bushes and lilacs with which she had
decorated her “posy-yard,” saying that he could
not tell one kind of brush from another.

But, dear me! how things are changed now!
Mrs. Ainsworth's heart is removed to the right
side. She made so long a visit among her Eastern
friends, who are now “fore-handed” folks, that
she has come back imbued most satisfactorily with
a loving appreciation of the advantages of civilization.
In dress, she is even ultra, according to our
sober ideas. The little wreaths of flowers which
decorate her cap, meet under her chin, and mingling
there with certain dangling blonde ringlets,
give her face no slight resemblance to that of the
individual with the flowing beard who used to
figure in the school-books as saying,

the sleeves out-bishop any body, and she is never
without a neck-chain, to which we are bound to
believe a watch is appended.

Then her table—here the change is all for the better—since

what table can be too neatly arranged?
The dishes are marshalled with military precision,
and, when tea and talk rule the hour, a plat of preserves
is sure to appear in the van, flanked on one
side by a pile of little plates, and on the other by a
reserve of tea-spoons. No more fishing in public
property with one's own spoon! No more fragmentary
specimens of the different sorts of food
edging the cut side of the pat of butter! Mrs.
Ainsworth would be ready to faint if any body
should reach across the table to plunge his dripping
tea-spoon into the sugar dish, to supply a deficiency
in his tea. Not but that her husband still occasionally
transgresses, in spite of curtain lectures;
but he will come round in time, since neatness like
truth is mighty, especially when urged only by
good-humor.

But improvement is no less evident in the garden
than in the house and its mistress. Mrs. Ainsworth
returned in the autumn and brought a load
of treasures of this sort; the greater part useful,—
some only ornamental. And without a murmur,
though no doubt with some suppressed groans, did
Mr. Ainsworth delay his wheat-sowing until roses
and honey-suckles, and peonies and tulips, with
multitudes of their fair or fragrant brethren, were
duly committed to the bounteous soil. Walks were
laid out, and “currant-brush” planted; and great
beds of Alpine strawberries, and whole thickets of
Antwerp raspberries, took the place of fireweed and

sorrel, grubs and dwarf-willows. So excellent an
example will, it is to be hoped, wake up the whole
village.

We ought all to have good gardens by this time,
but then we have so much else to do. Wheat and
indian corn, and oats, and buckwheat turn directly
into one's pocket; lilacs and lilies, and even cauliflower
and celery, are mere superfluities, and we
are a practical people. The tomato has hitherto
been considered heathenish and abominable; asparagus
useful only to put above the looking-glass
as a fly-trap. These things are common enough in
the older settlements, but we are only just beginning.

Many currant and raspberry bushes have been
planted, and they have shown a disposition to thrive
most luxuriantly. But the cows will get in once
in a while and eat them off, which checks their
growth sadly. And besides, the birds, free commoners
by prescriptive right—having been accustomed
to a boundless range of bushes of all kinds,
just where our little clearing now usurps their
place, make no scruple of helping themselves without
stint or measure to our half-formed fruits; and
so numerous are they that it would seem in vain
to attempt planting for them and ourselves too.
Strawberries however grow without planting, and
this is the sort of gardening that most of us like
best. These are so abundant that in the spring the
very road-sides are damasked with their silver blossoms,

and in their ripe season the foot of the passing
traveller crushes them every where on the uncultivated
uplands and on the moist borders of the
marshes. It is however on fields that have been
once ploughed that we find them in their greatest
perfection. This rude sort of cultivation doubles
their size without impairing their exquisite flavor.
Transplanting them to your garden seems to
affect them as a change from rural to city life does
some people. They branch out into splendid foliage,
but bear good fruit more sparingly than before.
All the fruits that ever grow in northern
climates, including even the peach, have been successfully
cultivated throughout this state. The
apple attains great perfection, as is usual on this
side the ocean, in these latitudes, and even in
those somewhat farther north. Plums—such as
grow on trees, not in pockets—are becoming very
abundant; and cherries are already so in the more
advanced settlements, and promise well in the new.
Pears, those terribly slow bearers, have reached perfection
only where planted by the old French inhabitants
of the regions in the vicinity of Detroit
River, where, we are told, some trees are still productive,
which are known to be centenarians.
The peach and the apricot,—especially the former,
which is so much the most valuable,—grow well
and bear abundantly; but the fruit is very liable to be
cut off by the “sneaping frosts” which sometimes
occur so late in the spring as to nip the trees when
in full blossom, and sweep their garlands from the
boughs. Yet we have seen noble specimens of
this delicious fruit raised in Michigan; and as
greenhouses and nurseries abound, and men skilled
in such mysteries are not wanting, we have high
hopes for future desserts.

But to finish our notice of Mrs. Ainsworth. She
has not only provided for the kitchen-garden, but
ventured upon a little stand of exotics for the parlor.
And there is a rumor,—a floating report,—
(and they say where there is smoke there must be
some fire,) that Mrs. Ainsworth has a plan for an
underground conservatory, to be constructed on the
south side of a little descent which slopes obliquely
near her house. This extravagance is not expected
to be more than six feet square, but I am
sure it will hold acres of happiness. I would not
wish to have it mentioned however. Let her break
the matter to her husband herself.

Connected with this same notion of “acres of
happiness” a thought suggests itself. Our neighbor
has just made a large addition to her innocent
enjoyment, by means of the improvements in her
garden. Now suppose her in the course of a year
or two to come into the possession of a handsome
establishment, such as may be found in this Western
world—a garden containing a couple of acres
—a corresponding variety of plants; a good greenhouse,
and people competent to keep such things
in order. There would then be no weeding in the

morning, and coming in to breakfast well draggled
with dew—(none for the lady, I mean)—no
transplanting in showery weather armed with a
pointed stick, and so shrouded in an old bonnet,
thick shoes, and dirty gloves, that her own husband
will scarcely own her—no solicitude about
any of the contingencies on which depends the
success of so much care and labor. To walk about
and enjoy what has been done, and question the
gardener as to what may be done—and to feel
very sure that he will object to whatever she
wishes to do—now constitute her gardening pleasures.

We will go on still further, and suppose good
Mrs. Ainsworth made, in process of time, the mistress
of such a garden as may be found in the
neighborhood of any of our Eastern cities. Here,
American wealth shall have done its utmost, and
extensive graperies and pineries, with all things on
a corresponding scale of expenditure, shall court
the charmed eye of the delighted guest;—the
lady herself having risen in condition and manners
accordingly.

Thus far all is easily supposed, and would imply
no greater ascent in the scale than has been the lot
of perhaps some of the very proprietors of those
delicious gardens. But we will strain a point, and
see Mrs. Ainsworth, our happy neighbor, pleased
with her little garden, pleased yet more with her
ample one, and thinking that her third and more

elegant one ought to give still greater pleasure; we
will suppose her at last transplanted to the twelve
acre garden at Chatsworth; with a greenhouse at
every turn, and two or three gardeners to every
greenhouse;—flower-baskets of cut stone thirty-two
feet square, and hundreds of people employed
in sweeping every aisle in her spacious pleasure-grounds,
that not a stray leaf shall offend her
majestic eye.

Tell us now, O sagacious philosopher! keen
sifter of the human heart and its desires and enjoyments,—which
of these gardens shall afford the
greatest amount of pleasure to Mrs. Ainsworth?