No garden is well stocked without a pair or two of toads. They will learn to distinguish your foot-steps from those of a stranger, as they come out at twilight. The toad is a philosopher, and is the most self-contained of all living things. He meditates all day in the shade, and takes his dinner promptly at twilight. That dinner may require a thousand insects. The dart of his tongue is never made amiss. If you cannot cultivate him for his beauty--and there may be a doubt on that score--you can tolerate him for his honest work. There is some cant about the ugliness of the toad that you would not respect when you have taught a pair to come out of their hiding places at your call, have given them pet names, and have seen them slay the remorseless mosquito. If you step on one after nightfall, it will be useless to objurgate. You cannot provoke him to talk back.
Consider what an advantage the toad has in another respect. He not only hibernates a part of the year, and thus saves his board-bills, but he has been known to suspend active life for a quarter of a century or more; as when, getting into a hollow tree, the orifice has been filled up, or he has been wedged in the cleft of a rock. But when restored, he resumes life with no inconvenience to his digestion. What might be gained if one only had the vitality of this batrachian! You have been overtaken by a stupidly dull era, or are disgusted with life. What an advantage to call on some friend to pack you away in ice, and to thaw you out only when the next quarter-century bell rings! Since we cannot go safely over this bridge with the batrachian, it is not well to put such a discount on his ugliness, nor is it well to be too exclamatory, if you tread on him in the twilight.
The garden is the place to test a great many pretty theories. And what if some of them fail? Is not the sum of our knowledge derived from failures, greater than all we have ever gained by successes? A feminine oracle, not content with her honeysuckle theory, had said: "You must not pull up a plant nor a vine that springs up spontaneously. Let it grow. There is luck in it." When, therefore, a melon-vine made its appearance quite in the wrong place, it was spared through the wisdom of that oracle. It went sprawling over the ground, choking more delicate plants, and rioting day by day in the warm sun and the rich loam underneath. Nearly all its blossoms fell off without fruitage. One melon took up all the life of the vine, and grew wonderfully. There had been tape-line measurements without number. When it gave out a satisfactory sound by snapping it with thumb and finger, and the nearest tendril had dried up, it was held to be fully ripe. It was _very_ ripe. A gopher had mined under that melon, and, not content with eating out the entire pulp, had, in the very wantonness of his deviltry, tamped the shell full of dirt! Where was the luck in this spontaneous growth? Nor did the matter end here. Sometime thereafter the following note, written in a feminine hand, was found pinned to that shell: