Philosophical Observation.--Nothing shows one who his friends are like
prosperity and ripe fruit. I had a good friend in the country, whom I
almost never visited except in cherry-time. By your fruits you shall
know them.
Pretending to reflect upon these things, but in reality watching the
blue-jays, who are pecking at the purple berries of the woodbine on the
south gable, I approach the house. Polly is picking up chestnuts on the
sward, regardless of the high wind which rattles them about her head and
upon the glass roof of her winter-garden. The garden, I see, is filled
with thrifty plants, which will make it always summer there. The callas
about the fountain will be in flower by Christmas: the plant appears to
keep that holiday in her secret heart all summer. I close the outer
windows as we go along, and congratulate myself that we are ready for
winter. For the winter-garden I have no responsibility: Polly has entire
charge of it. I am only required to keep it heated, and not too hot
either; to smoke it often for the death of the bugs; to water it once a
day; to move this and that into the sun and out of the sun pretty
constantly: but she does all the work. We never relinquish that theory.
I have been digging my potatoes, if anybody cares to know it. I planted
them in what are called "Early Rose,"--the rows a little less than three
feet apart; but the vines came to an early close in the drought.
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