I have often thought how capitally I invested five shillings a few years ago, in two apple-trees, which I gave to two poor women living under the hill. One of the trees produced twelve fine apples the second year; the year following, its owner sold a couple of bushels of the fruit. In a cottage full of hungry children, where meat is only tasted on Sundays, a good apple-pudding is no despicable hot dish on the noon-day board. Blackberries, of the children’s gathering, sometimes make a savoury addition to it.
When my cook Hannah married and settled in a cottage of her own, I gave her a few roots of Myatt’s Victoria rhubarb, and some round, white, American early potatoes, with enough onion-seed for a nice little square bed; a quart of peas, a quart of beans, a few early horn carrots, and a little parsley-seed; also pennyworths of canariensis, nasturtium, escolzia Californica, sweet-pea, candytuft, and red and white malope. Her husband immediately dug, raked, and planted the ground, and at once took to gardening after his day’s work. I need not say they are a respectable couple. He cannot read; but she reads The Leisure Hour and Sunday at Home to him.
Though we had a February of almost unprecedented warmth, I am told the primrose is shyly and charily putting forth its blossoms. But soon the warm banks will be gay with them, while the sweet wood-violet will betray itself by its fragrant breath at the roots of old trees. Among the earliest wayside productions is Jack-in-the-hedge, or sauce-alone; as ugly a Jack as one need wish to see, breathing odiously of garlic. Somewhat later, and rarer, is the perfoliate shepherd’s-purse, with its miniature pouches, that remind one of the scrip wherein a young shepherd, who lived to be a king, put five smooth pebbles from the brook. Its leaves, as I lately showed the little Prouts, are perfoliate, that is to say, they look as though the stem runs through them—a very nice and singular distinction, never to be forgotten after being once seen. A fortnight hence I expect to hear the yellow celandine has made its appearance. Wordsworth, who has immortalized it, as much as a poet can immortalize a flower, says, at first his unaccustomed eye saw it nowhere; afterwards, he saw it everywhere.
If the month be genial, we shall, towards its close, see “God’s hand-writing on the wall” of our gardens, in the opening buds and blossoms of our cherry-trees. Sheep are already turned out on the fresh pasture-land: their bleatings and tinkling bells sound prettily. Here and there may be seen a bee, a small fly, a gnat: how soon shall we see the first butterfly?
Toads are curious creatures: there was one that used to sit watching Mr. Cheerlove at his gardening with its beautiful eyes, and sometimes climb a little way up the paling to have a better view. I suppose it varied the monotony of its life. ’Tis of no use to cart them away in a flower-pot; they will return from a considerable distance to their old quarters. If you hurt them, they will look at you very viciously—and why should they not? We have no call to molest the poor wretches; the world is wide enough for us all. Efts and newts are objectionable: they haunt old drains, dust-holes, and any damp, unaired corners. Moles loosen the soil, and make sad work sometimes with the roots of one’s flowers; but yet, on the whole, they are found to do more good than harm. They make themselves subterranean galleries, and are very methodical, taking their walks at stated times. Hence it is very easy to trap them; but if you take one, you may take two, for they are so affectionate that the mate is sure to follow the leader. Hence I always felt a sort of pang in having them destroyed, especially as they have such human-like little hands for paws; and I was glad to be told that the cruelty was unnecessary, and that their loosening the soil did it good, though it might injure particular plants. In moving a stack of firewood at Nutfield, we found underneath it a rat’s nest, containing fifteen partridges’ eggs. How did the rat convey them there? Did he roll them, or carry them on his fore-paws, walking on his hind legs?
The starry heavens are now very glorious. Jupiter, bright, untwinkling planet, is splendid to behold. There are many more stars to be seen to the east than to the north; no human being knows why. The naked eye beholds what are called stars of the sixth magnitude, whose light left their surfaces a hundred and forty years ago. It is very singular that numerous stars, beyond the range of any but a very powerful telescope, prove to be placed in couples: they are called binary stars. Before Sir William Herschell’s death, he had completed a list of three thousand three hundred double stars. His sister Caroline shared his watchings, and took down the result of his observations in writing.
My dear father gave me a taste for astronomy very early in life; and in later years I have found star-gazing to have a strangely calming effect under the pressure of great trouble. I have looked out on the star-lit sky during Eugenia’s last illness, and after her death, till I felt every grief silenced, if not allayed, and every feeling steeped in submission. The stars make us feel so little! our lives so fleeting to a better world! our souls so near to God! O Cassiopeia, Andromeda, and Perseus, I owe to you many a consoling and elevating thought of your Maker!
My chimney does not smoke once in six months; but to-day, as ill-luck would have it, an unfortunate little puff came out in the presence of Miss Burt, who immediately declared that my chimney wanted sweeping shockingly; and that if I did not immediately put the chimney-sweeper’s services in requisition, I should not only be endangering my own life,—which I had no right to throw away,—but that of my servant, who would not particularly relish being burnt in her bed.
In vain I assured her that the chimney had not long been swept. Miss Burt talked me down, utterly deaf to the reminder that, being on the ground floor, we could easily walk out of the house in case of any disaster.