This amount is not so great that
the business man is burdened with care, nor is its limit so small
that he is cramped and thwarted by line fences. If he can give to
his bit of Eden but little thought and money, he will find that an
acre can be so laid out as to entail comparatively small expense
in either the one or the other; if he has the time and taste to
make the land his play-ground as well as that of his children,
scope is afforded for an almost infinite variety of pleasing
labors and interesting experiments. When we come to co-work with
Nature, all we do has some of the characteristics of an
experiment. The labor of the year is a game of skill, into which
also enter the fascinating elements of apparent chance. What a
tree, a flower, or vegetable bed will give, depends chiefly upon
us; yet all the vicissitudes of dew, rain, frost, and sun, have
their part in the result. We play the game with Nature, and she
will usually let us win if we are not careless, ignorant, or
stupid. She keeps up our zest by never permitting the game to be
played twice under the same conditions. We can no more carry on
our garden this season precisely as we did last year than a
captain can sail his ship exactly as he did on the preceding
voyage. A country home makes even the weather interesting; and the
rise and fall of the mercury is watched with scarcely less
solicitude than the mutations of the market.
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