IN OUR GARDEN.
"Suppose, TOBY dear boy," said the Member for Sark, "we start a garden, and work in it ourselves. TEMPLE did it, you know, when he was tired of affairs of State."
"Sir RICHARD?" I asked, never remembering to have seen the Member for Evesham in the company of a rake.
"No; CHARLES THE SECOND's Minister, who went down to Sheen two centuries before the Orleanist Princes, and grew roses. Of course I don't mean to be there much in the Session. The thing is to have something during Recess to gently engage the mind and fully occupy the body."
This conversation took place towards the end of last Session but one. By odd coincidence I had met the Member for Sark as I was coming from OLD MORALITY's room, where I had been quietly dining with him, JACKSON and AKERS-DOUGLAS made up party of four. It was second week of August; everybody tired to death. OLD MORALITY asked me to look in and join them about eight o'clock. Knocked at door; no answer; curious scurrying going round; somebody running and jumping; heard OLD MORALITY's voice, in gleeful notes, "Now then, DOUGLAS, tuck in your tuppenny! Here you are, JACKSON! keep the mill a goin'!" Knocked again; no answer; opened door gently; beheld strange sight. The Patronage Secretary was "giving a back" to the FIRST LORD of the TREASURY. OLD MORALITY, taking running jump, cleared it with surprising agility considering AKERS-DOUGLAS'S inches. Then he trotted on a few paces, folded his arms and bent his head; Financial Secretary to Treasury, clearing AKERS-DOUGLAS, took OLD MORALITY in his stride, and "tucked in his tuppenny" in turn.
Thought I had better retire. Seemed on the whole the proceedings demanded privacy; but OLD MORALITY, catching sight of me, called out, "Come along, TOBY! Only our little game. Fall in, and take your turn."
Rather afraid of falling over, but didn't like to spoil sport; cleared OLD MORALITY capitally; scrambled over AKERS-DOUGLAS; but couldn't manage JACKSON.
"I can't get over him," I said, apologetically.
"No," said AKERS-DOUGLAS, "he's a Yorkshireman."
"'Tis but a primitive pastime," observed OLD MORALITY, when, later, we sat down to dinner; "but remarkably refreshing; a great stimulant for the appetite. Indeed," he added, as he transferred a whole grouse to his plate, "I do not know anything that more forcibly brings home to the mind the truth underlying the old Greek aphorism, that a bird on your plate is worth two in the dish."
I gathered in conversation that when business gets a little heavy, when time presses, and leisure for exercise is curtailed, OLD MORALITY generally has ten minutes leap-frog before dinner.
"We used at first to play it in the corridor; an excellent place; apparently especially designed for the purpose; but we were always liable to interruption, and by putting the chairs on the table here we manage well enough. It's been the making of me, and I may add, has enabled my Right Hon. friends with increased vigour and ease to perform their duty to their QUEEN and Country. The great thing, dear TOBY, is to judiciously commingle physical exercise with mental activity. What says the great bard of Abydos? Mens sana in corpore sano, which being translated means, mens—or perhaps I should say, men—should incorporate bodily exercise with mental exercitation."
Of course I did not disclose to the Member for Sark, what had taken place in the privity of OLD MORALITY's room. That is not my way. The secret is ever sacred with me, and shall be carried with me to the silent tomb. But I was much impressed with the practical suggestions of my esteemed Leader, and allured by their evident effect upon his appetite.
"Men," continued the Member for Sark, moodily, "do all kinds of things in the Recess to make up for the inroads on the constitution suffered during the Session. They go to La Bourboule like the MARKISS and RAIKES; or they play Golf like Prince ARTHUR; or they pay visits to their Mothers-in-law in the United States, like CHAMBERLAIN and LYON PLAYFAIR; or they go to Switzerland, India, Russia, Australia, and Sierra Leone. Now if we had a garden, which we dug, and weeded, and clipped, and pruned ourselves, never eating a potato the sapling of which we had not planted, watered, and if necessary grafted, with our own hands, we should live happy, healthful lives for at least a month or two, coming back to our work having renewed our youth like the rhinoceros."
"But you don't know anything about gardening, do you?"
"That's just it. Anyone can keep a garden that has been brought up to the business. But look what chances there are before two statesmen of, I trust I may say without egotism, average intelligence, who take to gardening without, as you may say, knowing anything about it. Think of the charm of being able to call a spade a Hoe! without your companion, however contentious, capping the exclamation. Then think of the long vista of possible surprises. You dig a trench, and I gently sprinkle seed in it—"
"Excuse me," I said, "but supposing I sprinkle the seed, and you dig the trench?"
"—The seed is carrot, let us suppose," the Member for Sark continued, disregarding my interruption, his fine face aglow with honest enthusiasm. "I, not being an adept, feeling my way, as it were, towards the perfection of knowledge, put in the seed the wrong end up, and, instead of the carrots presenting themselves to the earnest inquirer in what is, I believe, the ordinary fashion, with the green tops showing above the generous earth, and the spiral, rosy-tinted, cylindrical form hidden in the soil, the limb were to grow out of the ground, its head downward; would that be nothing, do you think? I mention that only as a possibility that flashed across my mind. There are an illimitable series of possibilities that might grow out of Our Garden. Of course we don't mean to make money out of it. It's only fair to you, TOBY, that I should, at the outset, beg you to hustle out of your mind any sordid ideas of that kind. What we seek is, health and honest occupation, and here they lie open to our hand."
This conversation, as I mentioned, took place a little more than a year ago. I was carried away, as the House of Commons never is, by my Hon. friend's eloquence. We got the garden. We have it now; but I do not trust myself on this page to dwell on the subject.
FEMININE AND A N-UTAH GENDER.—Plurality of wives is abolished in Utah. The husbands seem to have made no difficulty about it, but what have the wives said?
"QUEEN'S WEATHER."—The weather is looking up. It was mentioned in the Court Circular last Wednesday week for the first time.
NOTICE.—Rejected Communications or Contributions, whether MS., Printed Matter, Drawings, or Pictures of any description, will in no case be returned, not even when accompanied by a Stamped and Addressed Envelope, Cover, or Wrapper. To this rule there will be no exception.